4. The Constitution wisely forbids Congress to make any law respecting the establishment of religion, but it is idle to hope that the nation can be protected against the influence of secret sectarianism while each State is exopsed to its domination. We, therefore, recommend that the Constitution be so amended as to lay the same prohibition upon the Legislature of each State, and to forbid the appropriation of public funds to the support of sectarian schools.

5. We reaffirm the belief avowed in 1876, that the duties levied for the purpose of revenue should be so discriminate as to favor American labor, that no further grants of the public domain should be made to any railway or other corporation; that slavery having perished in the States its twin barbarity, polygamy, must die in the Territories; that everywhere the protection accorded to a citizen of American birth must be secured to citizens by American adoption. That we deem it the duty of Congress to develop and improve our seacoast and harbors, but insist that further subsidies to private persons or corporations must cease, that the obligations of the Republic to the men who preserved its integrity in the day of battle are undiminished by the lapse of fifteen years since their final victory. To do them honor is and shall forever be the grateful privilege and sacred duty of the American people.

CHINESE RESTRICTION.

6. Since the authority to regulate immigration and intercourse between the United States and foreign nations rests with the Congress of the United States and the treaty-making power, the Republican party, regarding the unrestricted immigration of Chinese as a matter of grave concernment under the exercise of both these powers, would limit and restrict that immigration by the enactment of such just, humane, and reasonable laws and treaties as will produce that result.

7. That the purity and patriotism which characterized the earlier career of Rutherford B. Hayes in peace and war, and which guided the thoughts of our immediate predecessors to him for a Presidential candidate, have continued to inspire him in his career as Chief Executive; and that history will

accord to his administration the honors which are due to an efficient, just and courteous discharge of the public business, and will honor his vetoes interposed between the people and attempted partisan laws.

8. We charge upon the Democratic party the habitual sacrifice of patriotism and justice to a supreme and insatiable lust for office and patronage; that to obtain possession of the National Government and control of the place, they have obstructed all efforts to promote the purity and to conserve the freedom of the suffrage, and have devised fraudulent ballots, and invented fraudulent certification of returns; have labored to unseat lawfully elected members of Congress to secure at all hazards the vote of a majority of States in the House of Representatives; have endeavored to occupy by force and fraud the places of trust given to others by the people of Maine, rescued by the courage and action of Maine's patriotic sons; have, by methods vicious in principle and tyrannical in practice, attached partisan legislation to appropriation bills upon whose passage the very movement of the Government depended; have crushed the rights of the individual; have advocated the principles and sought the favor of the Rebellion against the Nation, and have endeavored to obliterate the sacred memories and to overcome its inestimably valuable results of nationality, personal freedom, and individual equality. The equal, and steady and complete enforcement of the laws, and the protection of all our citizens in the enjoyment of all privileges and immunity guaranteed by the Constitution, are the first duties of the nation.

THE SOLID SOUTH.

The dangers of a "Solid South" can only be averted by a faithful performance of every promise which the Nation has made to the citizen. The execution of the laws, and the punishment of all those who violate them, are the only safe methods by which an enduring peace can be secured and genuine prosperity established throughout the South. Whatever promises the Nation makes the Nation must perform. A Nation cannot with safety relegate this duty to the States. The

"Solid South" must be divided by the peaceful agencies of the ballot, and all honest opinions must there find free expression. To this end the honest voter must be protected against terrorism, violence or fraud. And we affirm it to be the duty and the purpose of the Republican party to use all legitimate means to restore all the States of this Union to the most perfect harmony which may be possible, and we submit to the practical, sensible people of these United States to say whether it would not be dangerous to the dearest interests of our country at this time to surrender the administration of the National Government to a party which seeks to overthrow the existing policy under which we are so prosperous, and thus bring distrust and confusion where there is now order, confidence and hope.

9. The Republican party, adhering to the principles affirmed by its last National Convention of respect for the constitutional rules governing appointments to office, adopts the declaration of President Hayes that the reform of the civil service should be thorough, radical and complete. To this end it demands the co-operation of the legislative with the executive departments of the Government, and that Congress shall so legislate that fitness, ascertained by proper practical tests, shall admit to the public service, and that the power of removal for cause with due responsibility for the good conduct of subordinates shall accompany the power of appointment.

DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM.

The Democrats of the United States, in Convention assembled, declare

1. We pledge ourselves anew to the Constitutional doctrines and traditions of the Democratic party, as illustrated by the teachings and example of a long line of Democratic statesmen and patriots, and embodied in the platform of the last National Convention of the party.

2. Opposition to centralizationism, and to that dangerous spirit of encroachment which tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever be the form of Government, a real despotism. No sumptuary laws; separation of Church and State, for the good of each; common schools fostered and protected.

CURRENCY.

3. Home rule; honest money-the strict maintenance of the public faith-consisting of gold and silver, and paper convertible into coin on demand; the strict maintenance of the public faith, State and National, and a tariff for revenue only. The subordination of the military to the civil power, and a general and thorough reform of the civil service.

4. The right to a free ballot is the right preservative of all rights, and must and shall be maintained in every part of the United States.

5. The existing Administration is the representative of conspiracy only, and its claim of right to surround the ballotboxes with troops and deputy marshals, to intimidate and obstruct the electors, and the unprecedented use of the veto to maintain its corrupt and despotic power, insult the people and imperil their institutions. We execrate the course of this Administration in making places in the civil service a reward for political crime, and demand a reform by statute which shall make it forever impossible for the defeated candidate to bribe his way to the seat of the usurper by billeting villains upon the people.

6. The great fraud of 1876-'77, by which, upon a false count of the electoral votes of two States, the candidate defeated at the polls was declared to be President, and, for the first time in American history the will of the people was set aside under a threat of military violence, struck a deadly blow at our system of representative government; the Democratic party, to preserve the country from a civil war, submitted for a time in firm and patriotic faith that the people would punish this crime in 1880; this issue precedes and dwarfs every other; it imposes a more sacred duty upon the people of the Union than ever addressed the conscience of a nation of free men.

7. The resolution of Samuel J. Tilden not again to be a candidate for the exalted place to which he was elected by a majority of his countrymen, and from which he was excluded by the leaders of the Republican party, is received by the Democrats of the United States with sensibility, and they declare

their confidence in his wisdom, patriotism and integrity, unshaken by the assaults of a common enemy, and they further assure him that he is followed into the retirement he has chosen for himself by the sympathy and respect of his fellow-citizens, who regard him as one who, by elevating the standards of public morality, merits the lasting gratitude of his country and his party.

SHIPPING.

8. Free ships and a living chance for American commerce on the seas and on the land. No discrimination in favor of transportation lines, corporations or monopolies.

9. Amendment of the Burlingame Treaty. No more Chinese immigration, except for travel, education, and foreign commerce, and therein carefully guarded.

10. Public money and public credit for public purposes solely, and public land for actual settlers.

11. The Democratic party is the friend of labor and the laboring man, and pledges itself to protect him alike against the cormorant and the commune.

12. We congratulate the country upon the honesty and thrift of a Democratic Congress which has reduced the public expenditure $40,000,000 a year; upon the continuation of prosperity at home and the National honor abroad, and, above all, upon the promise of such a change in the Administration of the Government as shall insure us genuine and lasting reform in every department of the public service.