Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1884 — SENATOR BAYARD. [ARTICLE]

SENATOR BAYARD.

The Delaware Statesman on the Evils oi Maladministration. Measures of great importance are now pending before the two houses of Congress, and it is impossible to foretell when*they may come up for discussion. The welfare of the country and the prosperity of all classes and occupations demand a speedy loosening of the restrictions upon production and trade, caused by the present tariff laws, which are palpably congesting every branch of manufacture, prohibiting .exchanges with other nations, convulsing our home markets with alternate excitement and' depression, and compelling the laboring classes to obtain their daily bread, not by a readiness to work steadily, but by dependence upon the condition of our home market alone, and its capacity, fitfully and n6t regularly, to afford them employment. This is the condition of things, and the attitude of the Republican party—under whose policies and administrations it has been brought about—is clearly shown by the votes in Congress and the declarations of their party press; and it must be seen that they are so enthralled by the oligarchy of protection of the favored few at the cost of the many that hope of reform or relief can be expected only from the ascendenoy of the Democratic party. . The evils of maladministration are everywhere apparent, are confessed in many, and proven to exist in nearly every department of the executive branch. Respectable men of every party are compelled to hold their noses over the developments of the starroute trials; the falling out of rogues in office and out of office is exposing a state of things so corrupt and shocking that the only marvel is tbat public business could have been conducted at all through such agencies. The testimony of special counsel and agents of the Government, of members of President Garfield’s Cabinet, and the official reports of the Department of Justice, are adding chapters in the history of maladministration equal to the worst days of the worst governments. These evils are thus proven by the internal evidence of the facts themselves to be so deep-seated and widespread in the very structure and substance of the Republican party tbat it cannot reform them from within; that they have grown by reiterated use to be its customary land daily food and means of obtaining and prolonging its power, find cannot now be abandoned, unless it abandons also all hope of continuing in power. Of what material the Republican convention soon to assemble in your great city is to be composed, and by which its action will be chiefly dominated, may be learned by an examination of the compositiop of the Louisiana delegation, headed by an individual now under indictment for bribery, accompanied by a band of political mercenaries and-politi-cal camp followers. Under such conditions how idle to hope for civil-service reform, or tariff reform, or reform of any kind or nature from a party of suoh antecedents, such composition and such inevitable administration in the future,Should it unhappily be permitted to continue the mlsgovernment of the country.— Hon. Thomas F. Bayard, to the Iroquois Club.