People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 November 1893 — A Disgraced Administration. [ARTICLE]

A Disgraced Administration.

From one of our exchanges we take the following, which we believe fully covers the ground concerning the first year of Grover Clevelands’ second term. The question arises,—what if he was to get a third term? The article is as follows: “It is probably quite within the bounds of truth to say that no administration of the United States government was ever so thoroughly disgraced during its first year as the present one. To recapitulate its leading acts is to arraign it before the people. The President, by his repeated acts of usurpation and exercise of arbitrary power, has shown his utter disregard for the spirit of the Constitution. He has spoken of Congress as a body subservient to the executive. He has attempted to coerce members and dictate legislation. He has used federal patronge to pay off campaign debts and to bribe Senators and Representatives to support his policy. He has made many appointments that were notoriously unfit and indecent. Ho has encouraged heads of departments to violate the letter and ignore the spirit of the civil-service law. He has appointed and retained in office an Attorney-general who is known to be in full sympathy with corporations and trusts, and who has became odious to all who have business with him. He has appointed as Secretary of the Interior a man who is strongly prejudiced against Union soldiers, and has sustained him in a policy of proscription and presecution of deserving pensioners. His Postrgastergeneral, a former law partner, has demonstrated his unfitness for the position by his utter failure to comprehend the business wants of the country, and by his willingness to cripple the postal service by an unwise economy. His Secretary of State has attempted to wreak his personal spite against the late administration by making a wholesale attack on American citizens and American ideas, and by using all the force of the government to restore a rotten monarchy and a corrupt Queen at the cost of infinite damage to American interests. His Secretary of the Treasury has played at finance while the government revenues have fallen off from month to month and the treasury balance has reached the lowest point known in a generation. While the President and members of his Cabinet have been making this disgraceful record the country has been passing through the worst financial panic in our history, caused in very large degree by popular distrust of the party in power. While arrogance and incompetence personal vanity and personal spite have reigned at Washington. universal depression and disaster have prevailed throughout the land. Certainly, no other administration was ever so disgraced during its first year.”