Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1883 — THE TARIFF DISCUSSION. [ARTICLE]

THE TARIFF DISCUSSION.

The Forty-Seventh Congress Will Mot Give the Country Tariff Reform. [From the Indianapolis Sentinel.] There is not an honest man in the country, no matter what his party affiliations may be, who believes that tho present Republican Congress intends to give the country any substantial tariff reform. It is, well known that proceedings, so far, indicate anything but reform. The New York Times, with considerable boldness of speech, says that “some of the principal Republicans in the Senate are inclined to have recourse to a reduction of internal revenue, and to leave the impost duties unchanged. They are, it is said, receiving letters from labor organizations threatening opposition to the Republican party if the tariff be reduced, and they are bullied by the powerful iron aud steel interests which claim-to hold the balance of power—and usually do hold it—in the very important States of Pennsyh-ania and Ohio. With these influences pressing them, they argue, as it appears, that the contest of the next year can be carried^"on in the saAe way as that of 1880, and their ticket elected by tlie help of the manufacturers’ money and the votes of their workmen.” Every step that has been taken by these principal Republicans in the Senate has been in the interest of protectionists and monopolists, and the Times gives the reasons for such treason to the masses of the people. It is the campaign of 1884 that fs noAv looming up in the distance. But the Times declares that the principal Republicans are mistaken about the help the protectionists and monopolists can furnish in 1884. It says: “They leave out of their account the fact that the Republican party has since 1880 suffered an overwhelming and humiliating defeat, brought about not by any accident, not by discontent arising from commercial depression, not by the strength of its opponents or the mere indifference of its members, but by a revolt. They forget that last fall hundreds of thousands of Republicans voted the Democratic ticket for the express and avowed purpose of rebuking their own party, and that the rebuke was directed in great part to the recklessness with which war taxes had been maintained in time of peace. These men voted the Rapublican ticket in 1880 because they hoped that their party under Garfield would enter on a changed course. They went over to the Democracy last year because the party had stuck to the old policy. They Avill not come back next yeftr if the party continues to adhere to that policy. If they do not come back, how js the Republican ticket to l>e elect* ed? Not by the votes which the manufacturers control. We had those last year. They will not be so numerous next year. They did not save us in 1882. Hoav can they save us in 1884?” Here are plain facts plainly set forth by a Republican organ which is laboring with its party for the purpose of beating some common sense into the heads of “principal Senators” of the Republican persuasion who are disregarding the mandates of the people. One of the shameful phases of tins altogether bad business is that these “principal Republicans,” Avhose mistakes the Times vividly outlines, are able to intrap Democrats and obtain their votes to help on their outrages; and when the campaign of 1884 begins and Democrats again contend for tariff reform, the Republican party will have it in its power to point to Democratic votes which helped the Republican party to maintain old outrages or perpetrate new ones. The New York Herald’s Washington correspondent says: - The Republicans in Congress do not intend to relieve the burdens of taxation. They mean to maintain in force the odious ana needless interference of the internal-reven-ue system, with its fft,ooo,ooo worth of taxeating office holders and Its spies. So far as the tariff is concerned the Republican programme is now pretty well known. It is that both houses shall, at all hazards, pass their separate tariff bills, so that the whole question may then be remitted in the last weeks of the session to a conference committee. Such a Conference Committee has six members, three from each House, appointed by the presiding officer in each Hou«e. The Tariff conference committee would consist for the hou«e of Mr. Kelley and perhaps Mr. Kasson, both extreme protectionists, and Mr. Carlisle or Mr. Morrbon, reformer;and in the Senate of Messrs Morrill and Sherman, extreme protectionists, and perhaps Mr. Beck, refornjer. This would give four-extreme protectionists and two ref umers, and to them, sitting in private, would he committed the final shaping of ’the tariff.' The result, can easily be foreseen Those Avho have ex'pected tariff reform of the Forty-seventh Congress may as well abandon all hope -first as last. It will not come—and the reason for it is that the Republican bosses ex* ]K>ct protectionists and monopolists to bulldoze their employes in 1884, and furnish the money to keep the Republican party in power.

Authors, and occasionally publishers, have been known to do singtdar • •lings in the way of compiling favornl >le notices of their books. One American writer of distinction has been made to regret the kindliness with which he lias answered requests for his opinions of certain volumes. On one occasion a private letter in which he had unhesiintingly condemned a book was so cut and condensed for publication that it was made to appear a warm encomium. This is far from being a unique occurrence.— Xeic York Tribune.