Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1888 — REVENUE REFORM. [ARTICLE]

REVENUE REFORM.

Meeting of the Massachusetts Tariff Reform League at Boston. 'The Evils of Protection and the Necessity for Reduced Taxation Set Forth. Speeches by James Russell Lowell anti Other Notables Cleveland’s Views Indorsed. [Boston special.] The meeting and banquet of the Massachusetts Tariff-Reform League at the Brunswick were highly successful, the arrangements being carried out upon a most elaborate scale. There were present a large number of prominent politicians and Government officials, both from Massachusetts and elsewhere, among the number being James Russell Lowell, Gen. John M. Corse, Patrick A. Collins, Congressman W. C. P. Breckinridge of Kentucky, W. L. Wilson of West Virginia, and Senator John T. Morgan of Alabama. Resolutions indoising the message of President Cleveland were unanimously adopted. Officers were then elected, after which the party proceeded to the banquet hall. After the banquet James Russell Lowell rapped the meeting to order. In the course of his address Mr. Lowell said : “One of the reasons that chiefly suggested the opportuneness of ojir coming together here has been the President’s message at the opening of the present Congress. Personally I confess that I feel myself strongly attracted to Mr. Cleveland as the best representative of the higher type of Americanism that we have seen since Lincoln was snatched from us. But we are not here to thank him as the head of a party. We are here to felicitate each other that the Presidential cnair has a man in it, and this means that every word he says is weighted with what he is. We are here to felicitate each other that this man understands politics to mean business, not chicanery, plain speaking, not paltering with ns in a double sense; that he has had the courage to tell the truth to the country without regard to personal or party consequences, and thus to remind us that a country not worth telling the truth to is not worth living in; nay, deserves to have lies told to it and to take the inevitable consequences in calamity. Our politics call loudly for a broom. Mr. Cleveland, I think has found the broom and begun to ply it. But gentlemen, the President has set us the example not only of courage but of good sense and moderation. He has kept strictly to his text and his purpose. He has shown us that there was such a thing as being protected too much, and that we had protected our shipping interests so effectually that they had ceased to be protected by ceasing to exist. In thus limiting the field of his warning and his counsels he has done wisely, and we shall do wisely in example. His facts and his figures will work all the more effectually. But we must be patient with them that expect them to work slow. Enormous interests are involved and must be treated tenderly.” “Mr. Lowell was interrupted frequently by storms of applause. At his first reference to President Cleveland Dr. William Everett, Jr., proposed three cheers for Cleveland, which were given with a will.

Upon concluding his speech Mr. Lowell introduced Senator John T. Morgan, of Alabama. The Senator said: “I believe we are now about to relieve our country of some of the fatuous enterprises which have injured her and crippled our wealth. To me it is a pleasant tiring that the men of the South and North are to-day conferring upon a question which is of interest to all of us. We find now and will find forever that there is no reason why the two sections should be embroiled. Sectional lines of distinction no longer exist and we are at last one people. I object to that system which wrings money from the people to bestow it upon political aspirants, be they friends or otherwise. The system of taxation for tariff has outgrown itself. The question is, shall we •cut down the revenue to our wants, or shall we keep this revenue year after year, or shall we dry up the sources of this revenue aud stop this wrong to the country?”

Congressman Breckinridge, of Kentucky, after speaking of the grave importance of the tariff question and the pressing need of Congressional action, said: “Protection is never healthy, nor, in the long run, profitable, any more than the feverish strength and restlessness produced by stimulants are evidences of health. The present rates of taxation are unequal, onerous, and hurtful to the mass of employed in the industries professedly sought to be protected; and so far as taxation is unnecessary for the necessities of the Government, economically administered, it is unjustly imposed and illegally gathered from the people. The reduction of taxation and the revision of the tariff, to which both the great political parlies are pledged, must be made gradually :nd cautiously, with a constant remembrance that systems long established cannot readily be changed, and that grave and practical difficulties lie in the path of any reform. In the nature of the case all protective tariffs must have an element of instability arid uncertainty. There are a few to whom this system is indeed a bonanza; to all others it is an injury and a wrong.” Congressman Wilson of West Virginia, Congressman Rogers of Arkansas, and others, followed in brief addresses. It was past midnight when the gathering broke up.