Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1879 — Pillage Must Cease. [ARTICLE]

Pillage Must Cease.

It has been said that since the accession of the Democratic party to power in both houses of Congress the lobby has disappeared. This fact. /peaks louder than platforms or speeches. The people know that it means smaller appropriations and lighter taxes. The ruthless application of the knife to executive estimates, and the large reduction of expenditures made by the lower house in the Forty-fourth Congress, had much to do with the election of Tilden and Hendricks in 1876. This, with the economical administration of Gov. Tilden in New York and his war upon the rings, undoubtedly produced the great majority against Hayes and Wheeler which was given, and was falsifiad in the interest of further corruption and extravagance. Mr. Blaine. Mr. Sherman, the third-termers, aud the fraudulent administration may make speeches, and more speeches, and do what they will to turn the public mind off upon other questions, but the real issue is this of honest and economical government. The people are determined to stop the plundering and the squandering, to reduce their taxes, and pay for nothing but the support of their Governments. They know that extravagance is the parent of every other evil, and that a people who permit the earnings of industry to be taken and enjoyed by their rulers, either with or without the forms of law, are mere slaves. The political history of the last few years shows that this great truth has leavened the whole public mind. The real struggle now is for the emancipation from corrupt combinations, rings, and corporations, which, in ways too numerous to mention, prey upon the people and eat out their substance. The campaign in Pennsylvania shows perhaps more clearly than any other the fact that the popular apprehension is fully alive to these issues. There reform seemed to be hopeless. In the State and in the chief cities, rings of political criminals, growing visibly rich from public plunder, controlled everything, and their despotic rule was scarcely questioned. The treasury ring embezzled millions, with but a feeble popular protest, which the leaders of both parties took care should find no effectual expression. The Pennsylvania railroad debauched and used the Legislature, and, in collusion with the rings, owned and directed the State administration. But they overdid the business. The recent attempt to filch $4,000,000 from the Commonwealth by bribing the Legislature to give it away was too startling. Men began to figure up how much it was proposed to »teal from them individually, or from their counties, by this single tremendous grab. Had this operation been successful, Lancaster county, for instance, would have been required to pay up, as her share of the ring’s booty, $121,000; York, $76,000; Chester, $77,000; Franklin, $45,000; Berks, SIOO,OOO, and so on through the list. Decent householders over there have begun to cipher—it is high time—and while they are about it they propose to find out to what extent they are robbed by the unconstitutional freight discrimination against them by this same Pennsylvania railroad, which they created and endowed, not to be their master but their servant. When they get this sum done, there will be a revolution in the old Commonwealth, and the Republican ring,' which openly sustains these iniquities, refuses to let its convention condemn the four million steal, and forces it to declare against “ honest men in office,” will be broken into fragments. The people are evidently determined that pillage must cease. —New York Sun.