The Life of Samuel J. Tilden, Volume 1

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Harper & Brothers, 1895 - 1358 pages
 

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Page 413 - It has impoverished many industries to subsidize a few. It prohibits imports that might purchase the products of American labor. It has degraded American commerce from the first to an inferior rank on the high seas. It has cut down the sales of American manufactures at home oud abroad, and depleted the returns of American agriculture — an industry followed by half our people.
Page 415 - Attorney-General misappropriating public funds: a Secretary of the Navy enriched or enriching friends by percentages levied off the profits of contractors with his department: an ambassador to England censured in a dishonorable speculation; the President's private secretary barely escaping conviction upon trial for guilty complicity in frauds upon the revenue; a Secretary of War impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors...
Page 415 - When the annals of this republic show the disgrace and censure of 'a Vice-President ; a late speaker of the House of Representatives marketing his rulings as a presiding officer; three senators profiting secretly by their votes as law-makers ; five chairmen of the leading committees of the late House of Representatives exposed in jobbery ; a late secretary of the treasury forcing balances in the public accounts ; a late...
Page 411 - ... laws; in the faithful education of the rising generation, that they may preserve, enjoy, and transmit these best conditions of human happiness and hope, we behold the noblest products of a hundred years of changeful history; but while upholding the bond of our Union and great charter of these our rights, it behooves a free people to practice also that eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty.
Page 256 - Government is bound to redeem every portion of its issues which the public do not wish to use. Having assumed to monopolize the supply of currency, and enacted exclusions against everybody else, it is bound to furnish all which the wants of business require. The...
Page 413 - American agriculture — an industry followed by half our people. It costs the people five times more than it produces to the treasury, obstructs the processes of production, and wastes the fruits of labor. It promotes fraud, fosters smuggling, enriches dishonest officials, and bankrupts honest merchants. We demand that all custom-house taxation shall be only for revenue. Reform is necessary in the scale of public expense — Federal, State, and municipal. Our Federal taxation has swollen from sixty...
Page 298 - We shall support no candidate who, however favorably judged by his nearest friends, is not publicly known to possess those qualities of mind and character which the stern task of genuine reform requires; for the American people cannot now afford to risk the future of the Republic in experiments on merely supposed virtue or rumored ability to be trusted on the strength of private recommendations.
Page 292 - They must be consummated with an increased efficiency and economy in the conduct of business and in the processes of production, and by a more rigorous frugality in private consumption. A period of self-denial will replace what has been wasted. We must build up a new prosperity upon the old foundations of American self-government; carry back our political systems toward the ideals of their authors ; make governmental institutions simple, frugal — meddling little with the private concerns of individuals...
Page 415 - Experience proves that efficient, economical conduct of the governmental business is not possible if its civil service be subject to change at every election, be a prize fought for at the ballot-box, be a brief reward of party zeal, instead of posts of honor assigned for proved competency, and held .for fidelity in the public employ ; that the dispensing of patronage should neither be a tax upon the time of all our public men, nor the instrument of their ambition.
Page 411 - The representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, in National Convention assembled, do reaffirm their allegiance to the principles of the party as formulated by Jefferson and exemplified by the long and illustrious line of his successors in Democratic leadership, from Madison to Cleveland...

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