He alludes to the action of the CivilService Commission about a weigher in the city of Brooklyn, and says:

When the Civil Service Commission consulted with me as to the status of Mr. Ster

ling and the true construction of the rule bearing upon that subject, I agreed with them in their second opinion that the position of weigher was subject to an examination, and that it should be filled by one who by means of a proper examination under the law proved himself competent and eligible. But it seemed to me that the good of the service required that the person to be appointed should be possessed of certain traits and qualifications which no theoretical examination would develop. One having in charge two or three hundred men of the class with which a weigher has to deal should possess personal courage, energy, decision and firmness of character. It is entirely certain that the possession of such qualifications could not in the least be determined by the result of an examination organized for the purpose of testing an applicant's knowledge and education.

And he closes:

No cause can gain by injustice or by a twisting of its purposes to suit particular tastes. And when a result is fairly reached through the proper operation of methods adopted to further a reform, it should be accepted-especially by the friends of the movement. They should not permit those of whom they require submission to say, with any semblance of truth, that they themselves submit only when the result ac

cords with their views.

This closes the public declarations of the President of the United States upon the views which he entertains as to the method and plans and system upon which the public service is to be conducted under his administration. There are some interesting details as to the practical effects and results of the effort of the administration to purify the public service, which I would be glad if I had time to refer to, but I believe I will forbear. I can only say that it seems from an inspection of the record as if the cry "6 put the rascals out" had been changed in effect to put the rascals in." Of course Mr. President, no party is exempt from accidents, no organization has a monopoly either of good men or of bad men, and in calling attention to the results of civil-service reform as applied to this administration, I should be insincere if I were to assume that such results had fol lowed from any predetermined purpose to put bad men into office.

We heard a great deal during the campaign about the corruptions, profligacy, misdeeds, and maladministration of Republican officials. I can only say that in view of what has occurred under this administration, if I were inclined to be un

charitable I could with entire propriety say that while the Republican party was in power it endeavored whenever it detected crime anywhere to punish it; but one of the practical results of Democratic administration has been the reverse, and that is to place in office a very large number of admitted and convicted felons. I have before me a selection from which I will, I believe, in support of this view of the case, give a law extract, stating in advance that these compilations are made from Democratic newspapers which, of course, is a mitigation of the slander, though it does not necessarily destroy its credibility.

Mr. —, of Baltimore, who was made volved in notorious election frauds and an Indian inspector in 1885, had been inwas condemned by the civil-service reform Independents of Maryland as a companion of Higgins, as a ballot-box stuffer, and a professional gambler.

The postmaster at Sioux City, Iowa, was convicted and sentenced in Dakota for violation of the pension laws The man who was removed to make a place for this eminent civil-service reformer had eight months yet to serve, and there was no complaint against him even to the extent that he was an offensive partisan.

Mr. Holmes, a postmaster in Mississippi, had been involved in notorious electionfraud scandals.

Mr. Shannon, appointed postmaster at Meriden, Miss., was the editor of the Mercury newspaper, which after President Grant's death contained a rabid editorial attacking the General's character; and he had been indicted in the United States court for "unlawfully and criminally conspiring with many others for the evasion of the civil-rights law."

In Rhode Island a Democratic postmaster was appointed who had been in the preceding three months arrested nine times for violation of the liquor law.

In Pennsylvania a man was appointed in the Philadelphia Mint who openly confessed to writing a forged letter from Neal Dow to be used in influencing the German vote in the State of Ohio the preceding year.

There have been some strange things done in Maine. I almost hesitate to quote this, but if I am wrong the Senators from that State will undoubtedly correct me. It is alleged that the postmaster in the town of Lincolnville was at the time of his appointment actually in the Portland jail, where he was serving a term for a misde

meanor.

An agent by the name of Judd, who was appointed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was, upon inquiry as to the fact whether he had been a horse-thief and served in the penitentiary, suspended from

office. The writer states that the only ground for supposing that he was not a horse thief arose from the fact that they do not put men in the penitentiary for stealing horses out West: that if he was alive it was a reasonable, natural conclusion that he had not stolen any horses. Nobody denied the penitentiary.

A gentleman named Richard Board, of Kentucky, was appointed in July, on the recommendation of Comptroller Durham, clerk in the railway mail service and assigned to duty in New Mexico. This is under the Postmaster-General, who found leisure between removing postmasters every fifteen minutes to appoint this man in another branch of the service where he incautiously mentioned to his friends something about his previous history, and it appeared that he had been three times arrested in Cincinnati for obtaining money under false pretenses, that he had been twice arrested for stealing in Kentucky, and once in Texas-a variegated and diversified career. "No pent up Utica" contracted his powers. He had stolen in three states. His father was a very wealthy man in high standing who had spent a great deal of money to protect his son, and through him he secured the indorsement of Comptroller Durham, and after he had been in service for a few weeks he committed a number of robberies, stole $163 from the moneyorder service, and at the date of this com munication was lying in jail at Santa Fé awaiting trial.

The Senator from Indiana [Mr. VOORHEES yesterday took occasion to advert with somewhat of animated hilarity to the suggestion of the Senator from Iowa about the evolutionary condition of the Democratic party, and dwelt with considerable unction upon a term that the Senator from Iowa had applied to the Democracy in his very able and interesting speech: a protoplasmic" cell, and the Senator then proceeded to give us the definition of the term as it appears in the dictionaries, and suggested that if those facts had been known at the time when the canvass was pending Mr. Cleveland would undoubtedly have been counted out in New York.

The Senator from Iowa might have gone further in his application of the doctrine of evolution with much propriety. Geology eaches us that in the process of being upward from the protoplasmic cell, through one form of existence to another there are intermediary and connecting stages, in which the creature bears some resemblance to the state from which it has emerged and some to the state to which it is proceeding. History is stratified politics; every stratum is fossilliferous; and I am inclined to think that the political geologist of the future in his antiquarian researches between the tri

assic series of 1880 and the cretaceous series of 1888 as he inspects the jurassic Democratic strata of 1884 will find some curious illustrations of the doctrine of political evolution.

In the transition from the fish to the bird there is an anomalous animal, long since extinct, named by the geologists the pterodactyl, or the winged reptile, a lizard with feathers upon its paws and plumes upon its tail. A political system which illustrates in its practical operations the appointment by the same administration of Eugene Higgins and Dorman B. Eaton can properly be regarded as in the transition epoch and characterized as the pterodactyl of politics. It is, like that animal, equally adapted to waddling and dabbling in the slime and mud of partisan politics and soaring aloft with discordant cries into the glittering and opalescent empyrean of civil-service reform.

The President closes his recent message to the Senate in this language:

The pledges I have made were made to the people, and to them I am responsible for the manner in which they have been redeemed. I am not responsible to the Senate and I am unwilling to submit my actions and official conduct to them for judgment.

There are no grounds for an allegation that the fear of being found false to my professions influences me in declining to submit to the demands of the Senate. I have not constantly refused to suspend officials, and thus incurred the displeasure of political the people for the sake of being false to friends, and yet willfully broken faith with

them..

Neither the discontent of party friends nor the allurements constantly offered of confirmation of appointees conditioned upon the avowal that suspensions have been made on party grounds alone, nor the threat proposed in the resolution now before the Senate that no confirmations will be made unless the demands of that body be complied with, are sufficient to discourage or deter me from following in the way which I am convinced leads to better government for the people.

He is not responsible to the Senate, nor is the Senate responsible to him; both are alike responsible to the people. But in the cases at bar we are compelled to inquire. in justice to the people, whether those ple ges have been redeemed, or whether they have been broken, violated, and disregarded. Had the patronage of the Government, within proper limits, been turned over for its exercise to the party intrusted with power by a majority of the people there could have been no complaint, but upon the assurances that I have read, the declaration was made that in every case where an incumbent was competent and qualified he should remain in office till the expiration of his term.

When, therefore, some were suspended and others were left, what is the irresistible inference, after the declarations of the President, except that these persons were suspended for cause either affecting their personal integrity or their official administration? Upon the ground, then, of personal justice, if no other, we are entitled to know whether wrong has been done by the accusations that have been filed in the Departments, so that we may protect those who are unable to defend themselves from injustice and defamation.

But there is another reason, and to me a still more convincing reason, why we should be advised in the case of these suspensions what are the papers, the official documents, and the reports on the files of the departments affecting the administration of these offices, and that is this: under the tenure-of-office act, every official suspended is reinstated by the provisions of section 1768 of the Revised Statutes, if the Senate adjourns without confirming the designated person, and continues to exercise and discharge the duties of that office, until he is again suspended by the President. Therefore, in acting upon these cases we have a double duty to perform; in the first place, to decide whether the person suspended was properly suspended, and in the next place, whether he is a competent person to be restored to office under and by virtue of the operation of the statute under which he was suspended. If he is not a competent person then he ought not to be restored, and we cannot determine whether he is competent and qualified and fit to discharge the duties of that office until we have the official declarations and statements upon which the action of the President was based.

Since this debate began, there are indications that the President has become convinced that his position is untenable, and that he has concluded to yield to the reasonable requests of the Senate and relieve suspended officials from the otherwise inevitable imputations upon their conduct and character. I find the following correspondence in one of the metropolitan journals, which if authentic relieves the relation between the President and the Senate of the principal restraint:

COMMITTEE ON FINANCE, UNITED STATES

SENATE, March, 17, 1886. DEAR SIR: Will you please advise the Committee on Finance whether or not there are any papers or charges on file reflecting

against the official or moral character of late collector of internal revenue for the first district of, suspended?

If there are any such papers or charges will you please communicate their nature and character to the committe? Very truly, yours,

JUSTIN S. MORRILL.
Hon. DANIEL MANNING,
Secretary of the Treasury.

MARCH 19, 1886.

SIR: Your communication on behalf of · the Finance Committee of the Senate, dated, March 17, 1886, asking whether or not there are any papers or charges on file reflecting against the official or moral character of late collector of internal revenue for the first district of, suspended, is received.

In reply thereto I have the honor to state that, so far as this inquiry relates to a suspension from office, I feel bound by the rules laid down in the President's recent

message to the Senate upon the general subject of such suspensions.

But in order that I may surely act within the requirements of the statute relating to the furnishing by this Department of information to the Senate, I beg leave to remind the committee that the office referred to has no fixed term attached to it, and to further state that the President is satisfied that a change in the incumbency of said office will result in an improvement of the public service, and that the policy of the present administration will be better carried out by such change.

Except as the same may be involved in these considerations, no papers containing charges reflecting upon the official or moral character of the suspended officer mentioned in your communication are in the custody of this Department.

Respectfully, yours,

D. MANNING, Secretary.
HON. JUSTIN S. MORRILL,
Chairm'n of the Senate Com. on Finance.

But whether this be true or not, this is not the forum in which this controversy is to be ultimately decided. The Executive is not on trial before the Senate; the Senate is not on trial before the Executive; but both, as to the sincerity of their professions and the consistency of their actions, are on trial before that greater, wiser, and more powerful tribunal-the enlightened conscience of the people, from whose verdict there is neither exculpation nor appeal.

46

The Tariff Speech of Samuel J. Randall. Delivered in the House of Representatives, May 18, 1888.

He opened by referring to the President's recent message, in which the Executive advised Congress that the surplus in the Treasury by the 30th of June, at the end of the current fiscal year, would be expected to reach the sum of $140,000,000, including prior accumulations; or more closely stated, the sum of $113,000,000, apart from prior accumulations, over and above all authorized expenditures, including the sinking fund for the current year.

He then quoted from the President's message defining his position on the tariff and internal revenue questions, and said that, from the utterances of the President, he understands the Executive to be adverse to any reduction of the internal taxes, as that mode of taxation afforded, in the opinion of the President, "no just complaint, and that nothing is so well able to bear the burden without hardship to any portion of the people."

The President further said that the tariff law was a vicious and illegal source of inequitable tax, and ought to be revised and modified, and the President had urged upon Congress the immediate consideration of this matter to the exclusion of all others. The President had asserted in substance that the reduction necessary should be made by additions to the free list, and by the lowering of the rates of duty.

In the presence of such language, emanating from the Executive, authorized by the direction of the Constitution to communicate and from time to time give to Congress information on the state of the Union, and recommend such measures as he should judge necessary, it was imperatively required of the representatives of the people to give fair, intelligent, and prompt attention to the suggestions made. He had done so.

He had introduced and had referred to

The remedy he (Randall) proposed was through the repeal of internal revenue taxes as well as by a full revision of the tariff, as promised to the people by the Democratic Convention of 1884. The reduction provided for in his bill aggregated $77,000,000 on internal taxes.

Those taxes had always been the last to be levied, and the first to be repealed when no longer necessary.

Jefferson had given the death-blow to excise taxes, that most vicious of all taxes, and among the things he received the thanks of the Legislature of his native State for doing, was for having the internal taxes abolished. The first tax also to be repealed after the War of 1812 had been the excise tax, which was recommended by Madison, and was the first law enacted under the administration of Monroe. The Democratic Convention of 1884 declared that internal revenue was a war tax, and this declaration, taken in connection with the other declarations of the platform, clearly established the fact that the opinion of the Convention was that some of the internal revenue taxes should first go, and that they should all go whenever a sufficient sum was realized from custom-house taxes to meet the expenses of the Government economically administered.

The country was practically in such a condition now, and the true response to those declarations warranted the repeal of the internal revenue taxes to the extent proposed by his bill. He favored now, as he had always done, a total repeal of the internal revenue taxes.

In the bill which he introduced he proposed to sweep all these taxes from the statute-books, except a tax of fifty cents on whiskey, and he would transfer the collection of that tax to the customs officials if that was found to be practicable.

With Albert Gallatin, he regarded excise taxes as offensive to the genius of the people, tolerated only as a measure of emergency, and as soon as the occasion for them had passed away they should cease to exist.