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even though he might be as honest as Grover Cleveland. That platform was a declaration of principles adopted by representative men, who saw that the Nation was growing older, and that new issues were born. They had gone through many trials during the war, and they desired the preservation of personal rights, and of the reserved rights of the states, while acknowledging the supremacy of the Federal Government within the limits of the Constitution. These are the true bases of our liberties which the Democracy could not surrender. When the condition of the country demanded a change the Democracy made an indictment of the party which had been in power for a quarter of a century. The indictment charged that the Republican party during its legal, its stolen, and its bought tenures of power had steadily decayed in moral character and political capacity. Its promises as to the navy and shipping were failures. It was at war with its own professions as to the public lands and small holdings. The indictment proceeds to say, that that party has given away to railroads, and non-resident aliens, individual and corporate, a larger area than that of all our farms between the two seas. Has not the verdict sustained the indictment?

The Republican party still professes a preference for free institutions: yet it organized and tried to legalize a control of state elections by Federal troops. It professes a desire to elevate labor: yet it subjected American workingmen to the competition of convict labor and imported contract laborers. It professes gratitude to all who were disabled or died in the war, leaving widows and orphans: yet it left to a Democratic House of Representatives the first effort to equalize both bounties and pensions. It proffers a pledge to correct the irregularities of our tariff: yet it created and continued them. Its own Tariff Commission confessed the need of more than twenty per cent. reduction yet its Representatives in Congress gave a reduction of less than four per cent. It declares for the protection of American manufactures: yet it subjected them to an increasing flood of home manufactured goods, and a hopeless competition with manufacturing nations, not one of which taxes raw materials. It professes to protect all American industries: yet it impoverished many to subsidize a few. It professes the protection of American labor: yet it depleted the returns of agriculture—an industry followed by half our people. It professes the equality of all men before the law and while attempting to fix the status of colored citizens, the acts of its Congresses were overset by the decisions of Republican courts. It" accepts anew the duty of leading in the work of progress and reform”: yet its detected criminals are permitted to escape through contrived delays or actual connivance of the prosecution. Honeycombed with corruption, outbreaking exposures have long since ceased to shock its moral sense. Its honest members, its independent journals, no longer maintain a successful contest for authority in its counsels or support its bad nominations. That change of party rule was necessary, is proved by an existing surplus of more than one hundred

:

million dollars in excess of the needs of the government. Unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation. The Republican party failed to relieve the people from crushing war taxes, which, were it not for our immense resources, would have paralyzed business, crippled industry, and deprived labor of employment and its just reward. The Democracy pledges itself to purity of administration, to economy, to respect for law, and to the reduction of taxation to the lowest limit consistent with a due regard to the preservation of the faith of the Nation to its creditors and pensioners. Knowing full well, however, that legislation affecting the occupations of the people should be cautious and conservative in method, not in advance of public opinion, but responsive to its demands, that party has pledged itself to revise the tariff laws in a spirit of fairness to all interests.

In its latest platform the Democracy stands pledged to restore the economies belonging to a fair and free government. They favor a continental policy which would have accorded with the best sentiment of the days of William L. Marcy. They are pledged in favor of honest money,—for the gold and silver coinage of the Constitution, and a paper circulating medium convertible into such money without loss. Remembering the struggle to which reference has been made in a preceding chapter, and in which Mr. Hewitt, of New-York, led the debate in the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses, it may be proudly claimed that the Democracy compelled a reluctant Republican administration to assent to legislation which made everywhere illegal the presence of Federal troops at the polls. This is one of the conclusive proofs that a Democratic administration can preserve liberty with order by constitutional methods.

On social and sumptuary matters the Democracy met the advances of liberty more than half way. In favoring an honest non-partisan civil service, they will fulfill their pledges and their promises. In sympathizing with labor in its just demands, they are as sincere in their professions as they have been in their practices. In opposing the confirmation of unearned grants of the public lands and demanding their forfeiture in the Congress which has just expired, they have been true to the policy of reserving the public domain for the use of the people.

While insisting that we shall have no entangling foreign policy, they ask for a return to the old democratic policy of reciprocity, which will give us a larger market for the varied products of our industry, a market which under a quarter of a century of Republican rule became so limited that scarcely a merchant flag remained upon the sea as evidence of our former maritime prowess and adventure.

It was on this platform of Democratic principles that Gov. Grover Cleveland, of New-York, and Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana, were nominated for President and Vice-President.

It would be invidious to make comparisons between the two leading can

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683

didates before the people of this country in 1884. In fact, they present points of contrast, rather than of comparison. The Republican candidate was no new man in Federal politics, as was Governor Cleveland.

When one would compare James G. Blaine, that splendid glancing figure in our politics, with the sedate, quiet, and unostentatious governor of New-York, it is like comparing the electric flashings of the aurora borealis to the stately movements of the rising sun,- that source of growth and life. Grover Cleveland was born in Essex County, New Jersey, in 1837. His father was a Presbyterian clergyman. His family was ennobled through many generations by honest men and women. Its most conspicuous member steadily advanced to high position. After serving as mayor of Buffalo, Grover Cleveland became governor of the State of New-York. Since then his star has been in the ascendant. Since his first vote was cast he has been a Democrat of the best type. His election to the gubernatorial chair by an astounding majority of two hundred thousand votes indicates the fickleness of the popular breath. It was so tempestuous in his favor, that he cannot fail to discern the power of that independent element to which he is indebted for his first, as well as his more recent triumphs. That he respects this element, is significant of his prudence and his gratitude.

Grover Cleveland is in his forty-eighth year. He has a powerful frame. His manners are agreeable. He is liberal in his thoughts. He is a man of democratic simplicity. He dislikes ostentation. The key-note to his character is found in the moderation and frugality of his life. His firmness and courage, and his deliberate judicious action mark him as a man of manliest mould, and high capacity for leadership and administration. He is a Jeffersonian Democrat, honest, capable, and faithful to the Constitution.

ness.

In the election of 1884 the people expressed their national consciousIn other words, there was a revolution which dethroned a corrupt and effete party. In closing the last decade of this history, we see the Democratic party restored to power,- and at the head of our Nation, Grover Cleveland. If Silas Wright deserved to be called by Thomas Benton the Cato of America, may we not in tracing the life of the successor of Silas Wright, from his birthplace, through childhood and as student, following him through his professional career until his election as magistrate of a city and then as governor of a great state, find many of the attributes of Wright, and also something of the famous Roman? In many ways the similitude is striking; and most in that he is truthful, honest, unselfish, kind hearted, and devoted to the principles of Democracy and the welfare of the country. Rome never needed a Cato more than America needed a man of similar qualities, to free her from the gyves of corrupt politics. This Nation has such a man for President. While others may falter in duty, he will stand firm and true to the principles of the platform on which he was elected, and observe and carry out his pledges of reform in letter and spirit. His need

was so exigent that we may well stand appalled at the danger we have escaped, and which threatened our free institutions. It needed a statesman as courageous as Cæsar and as honest as Cato to save our liberties from a decadence worse than death!

It is upon the same day of the week, and the same month, eighty-four years after the inauguration of the first Democratic President, Thomas Jefferson, at the new city of Washington, that Grover Cleveland and Thomas A. Hendricks are installed in their high offices. A contrast of the city of 1801 with the city of to-day will show something of the progress of our country in all that makes up grandeur, extent, influence, prestige, and power. Perhaps a more striking contrast would be that of the two inaugurations. The first was as unostentatious as the village in which it occurred. The second well became the capital of a mighty nation. There seemed to be no end to the grand and imposing cavalcade which ushered in this new epoch. No such display of men in line, or of enthusiasm at heart, has ever been witnessed in any country. The cycle of our felicities closes with this grand restoration of Democratic government! After three decades of wandering in the wilderness, the people at last have their representative men installed in their great trusts.

The writer, in closing this volume at the commencement of a new régime, cannot but recall the attempts of those who opposed the Democratic party in its efforts for peace and harmony during the terrible struggles of the past three decades. At length peace has come! Slavery, the béte noir of our politics, is no more. The constitutional amendments are acquiesced in. A majority of the Southern members of Congress, on a resolution offered by the writer, have affirmed their devotion to the Union, and asserted that secession is forever gone to the rearward and abysm.

The country is greatly changed. It is changed politically, socially, materially, nationally. Novus seculorum nascitur ordo. Our next census will show sixty millions of people. By the end of the century it will show a hundred millions. The questions of municipal independence, state rights, and local self-government may come again; but never again with so much terrible consequence as in 1860-'61.

In the judgment of the writer, it is only by guarding against the centralization of government that the great diversity of interests in a Union of such extent as ours can be harmonized, and individual rights be secured. The doctrines of local independence and self-government have ever been the inspiration of the writer. Without these doctrines our Union would be forever endangered. By adhering to them it will fulfill the hopes and answer the prayers of all true patriots. They furnish the key to unlock the magic chambers of our future. They are the safe and golden mean between the extremes of faction.

CHAPTER XL.

MATERIAL PROGRESS IN THREE DECADES.

RESULTS OF CENSUSES-OBJECT OF CENSUS FROM 1790-THE LEGISLATION FOR THE TENTH CENSUS, OF 1880-ITS COMPLETENESS-STAR OF EMPIRE AND CENTRE OF POPULATION IN 1880-SOCIAL STATISTICS -- CENTENNIAL YEAR OUR INCREASE FROM DECADE TO DECADE - DETAILS OF ADVANCEMENT— FEDERAL TRADE AND TARIFF RESTRICTIONS - HINDRANCES TO PHYSICAL GROWTH-ODDITIES OF THE CENSUS-THE PUBLIC LANDS PRIMARY OBJECT OF THE CENSUS THE APPORTIONMENT OF REPRESENTATION REINCREASE OF THE SOUTH IN POPULATION, AND NOT VOTES, THE BASIS OUR UNIQUE SYSTEM-THE MUNIMENTS OF PUBLIC LIBERTY FOUNDED ON THE CENSUS OF POPULATION — OUR LIGHT OF LIBERTY,

I

SULT OF THE LAST APPORTIONMENT
POLITICAL POWER

N the concluding chapters of this volume, which has reference to only thirty years of our American history, there would be an incompleteness of etching if, amid the vicissitudes of war and peace, the advancement of the country were not more or less touched upon. No country ever had better established data for the ascertainment of its progress than the United States. It is no new remark that this country stands alone among nations in its exhaustive state and federal system of registry or census, beginning with the commencement of the government and extending down to the present time. It has already taken ten national censuses. All of these have had reference to the enumeration of the inhabitants required by the Federal Constitution to be made once every decade. The primary object of the constitutional provision is to fix the apportionment of representatives, and of direct taxes among the states. The matter of direct taxes has become, for reasons not necessary to detail, obsolete. The apportionment of representatives has passed through many and curious processes of legislation. In the course of a decade, it would become almost impossible to insure the indispensable prerequisite of fair representation for a rapidly increasing population like that of the several states, in a Federal polity like ours, without a veracious return of their inhabitants. The first census, of 1790, merely undertook to require a return of the inhabitants. The second census, of 1800, was like the first. The third was identical with the second. But a grand stride was taken in 1810, on the first day of May, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin. He went outside of the strict construction of the Constitution and undertook to have an ac