On the evening of his nomination he was tendered a serenade a Vanderbilts mansion, and in response he made the following speech:
Fellow-citizens: I thank you for the honor you do me in the midst of this storm. I know it is the cause, more than its representative, that calls out this manifestation of interest and-enthusiasm. Well may it.
A peaceful revolution in all government within the United States is going on to a sure consummation. Ideas of change pervade the political atmosphere. They spring up from the convictions of the people. The supporters of the Administration have lost confidence in it and in themselves. The opposition become more intense in their convictions and in their action. Multitudes pass over from support to opposition, or sink into silent discontent.
Are we asked the causes? The answer is found in the condition of our country. The fruits of a false and delusive system of government finances are everywhere around us. All business is in a dry rot. In every industry, it is hard to make the two ends meet. Incomes are shrinking away; and many hitherto affluent are becoming anxious about their means of livelihood. Working-men are out of employment. The poor cannot look out upon the light or air of heaven but they see the wolf at the door.
Inflation no longer inflates. Even while paper-money is swelling out a new emission, values sink. Bankers' balances in the monetary centres are increased, and call loans are cheaper; but those who need more capital can neither buy nor borrow any of the forty-four millions of new greenbacks. The truth is, that our body politic has been overdrugged with stimulants. New stimulants no longer lift up the languid parts to a healthy activity. They merely carry more blood to the congested centres.
One thing only remains in its integrity; that is our taxes. Amid general decay, Taxation puts out new sprouts and grows luxuriantly.
"It seats itself "—if I may borrow a figure from the greatest of our American poets—
"... upon the sepulchre— And of the triumphs of its ghastly foe, Makes its own nourishment."
National taxes—State taxe^—county taxes—town taxes—municipal taxes. The collector is as inevitable as the grim messenger of death. Incomes, profits, wages; all these fall, but taxes rise.
Six years ago, I had occasion to say that while values were ascending, and for some time after, it might be easy to pay these taxes out of the froth of our apparent wealth; but that, when the reaction of an unsound system of government finance should set in, the enormous taxation which that system had created would consume not only our incomes and profits, but trench upon our capital. What was then prediction is now experience.
Retrenchment in public expenditure; reform in public administration; simplification and reduction of tariffs and taxes; AccountAbility of public officers, enforced by better civil and criminal remedies. The people must have these measures of present relief—measures of security for the future.
The Federal Government is drifting into greater Dangers and greater Evils. • It is rushing onward in a career of centralism, absorbing all governmental powers, and assuming to manage all the affairs of human society. It undertakes to direct the business of individuals by tariffs not intended for legitimate taxation, granting special privileges and fostering monopolies at the expense of the people. It has acquired control of all banks; it has threatened to seize on all the telegraphs; it is claiming jurisdiction of all the railroad corporations chartered by the States, and amenable to the just authority of the States.
It is going on to usurp control of all our schools and colleges, stretching its drag-net over the whole country, and forcing editors and publishers away from their distant homes into the courts of the District of Columbia. It is subjecting the free press of the whole United States, for the criticism of the Administration, to trial by the creatures of the Administration, acting under the eye of the Administration. It dared to enforce this tyranny against a free man of the metropolis of our State.
These tendencies must be stopped, or, before we know it, the whole character of our Government will be changed. The simple and free institutions of our fathers will have become the worst Government that has ever ruled over a civilized people.
It will be the most ignorant. A distinguished Republican statesman (I mean Senator Conkling) lately told me that more than 5,000 bills were before Congress at its last session. In a little time, as we are now going on, there will be 20,000. Nobody can know what is in them.
We have a country eighteen times as large as France, with a population of 43,000,000, doubling every thirty years, and full of activities and interests. A centralized Government, meddling with every thing and attempting to manage every thing, could not know the wants or wishes of the people of the different localities, and would be felt only in its blunders and its wrongs.
It would be the most irresponsible, and therefore not only the most oppressive, but the most corrupt with which any people have been cursed.
To-day the advances which we have made toward this system aro maturing their fatal fruits. The Federal Administration is tainted with abuses, with jobbery, and with corruption. In the dominion which it maintains over the reconstructed Southern States, organized pillage on a scale tenfold larger than that of the Tweed "Ring " is the scandal and shame of the country.
Civil liberty is endangered. It is now certain that President Grant nourishes the bad ambition of a third term.
If the sacred tradition established by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson can be broken, the President may be reelected indefinitely, and, wielding from the centre the immense patronage which will grow out of such vast usurpation of authorities by the Federal Government, he would grasp the means of corrupt influence by which to carry the elections. There will be no organized thing in the country of sufficient power to compete with him or to resist him.The forms of free government may remain, but the spirit and substance will be changed. An elective personal despotism will have been established. Roman history in the person of Augustus Csesar will be repeated.
Thoughtful men are turning their minds to the means of escape from the overshadowing evils. The Republican party cannot save the country. Ideas of governmental meddling and centralism dominate over it. Class interests hold it firmly to evil courses. Throngs of office-holders, contractors, and jobbers, who have grown up in fourteen years of its administration—in four years of war and during an era of paper-money—are too strong in the machinery of the party for the honest and well-intending masses of the Republicans. The Republican party could contribute largely to maintain the Union during the civil war. It cannot reconstruct civil liberty and free institutions after the peace.
A change of men is necessary to secure a change of measures. The opposition is being matured and educated to take the Administration. The Democracy, with the traditions of its best days, will form the nucleus of the opposition. It embraces vastly the larger body of men of sound ideas and sound practices in political life. It must remove every taint which has touched it in evil times. It must become a compact and homogeneous mass. It must gather to its alliance all who think the same things concerning the interests of our republic. It is becoming an adequate and effective instrument to reform the Administration and to save the country.
It reformed itself in order that it might reform the country, and now, in your name and in the name of the five hundred thousand voters whom you represent, we declare that in this great work we will tread no step backward. Come weal or come woe, we will not lower our flag. We will go forward until a political revolution will be worked out and the principles of Jefferson and Jackson shall rule in the Administration of the Federal Government.
Let us obey the patriotic maxim of old Rome, "Never to despair of our country." Actual evils can be mitigated. Bad tendencies can be turned aside. The burdens of government can be diminished. Productive industry will be renewed, and frugality will repair the waste of our resources. Then shall the golden days of the republic once more return, and the people become prosperous and happy.
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