The Life of Samuel J. Tilden, Volume 1

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Harper & Brothers, 1895 - Politicians - 1358 pages
 

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Page 409 - For the Democracy of the whole country, we do here reaffirm our faith in the permanence of the federal Union, our devotion to the Constitution of the United States, with its amendments universally accepted as a final settlement of the controversies that engendered civil war...
Page 411 - 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.
Page 413 - 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 408 - 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...
Page 254 - 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 296 - 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 290 - 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 413 - 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 181 - ring' is, that it encircles enough influential men in the organization of each party to control the action of both party machines, — men who in public push to extremes the abstract ideas of their respective parties, while they secretly join their hands in schemes for personal power and profit.
Page 413 - ... political organization infect the body politic, and lest by making no change of men or parties we get no change of measures and no real reform. All these abuses, wrongs, and crimes, the product of sixteen years...

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