Congress, which report shall embrace the testimony and evidence taken in the course of investigation, and conclusions reached by said commission on the several subjects examined, and any recommendation said commission may see proper to make, by bill or otherwise, with a view of correcting any deficiencies in the law, or abuses, or violations of law, or corruption, in the administration of said Department.

"That any vacancy occurring in the membership of said commission, by resignation or otherwise, shall be filled by the presiding officer of the Senate or House of Representatives, respectively, according as the vacancy occurs in the Senate or House of Representatives on said Commission."

Mr. Lodge moved to lay this amendment on the table, and on this motion there was a yea and nay vote (p. 4872, Congressional Record, April 12, 1904); yeas 40, all Republicans; nays 19, all Democrats; not voting 31.

CONSTITUTIONALISM.

EDWARD M. SHEPARD, REPLYING TO MESSRS. HAY AND ROOT, PLEADS FOR A "RETURN TO RESPECT FOR LAW" AS THE

FIRST REFORM NEEDED IN THE AMERICAN

GOVERNMENT.

A Summing Up of the Real Issues of the Campaign and a Plain Statement of the Democratic Position. Republican Pretensions Dissected, and the Real Sources of our National Prosperity Set Forth.

SPEECH OF EDWARD M. SHEPARD AT BENNINGTON, VERMONT,
AUGUST 31, 1904.

It is natural enough to talk for Parker and Davis at Bennington. For their campaign is only a later chapter in that long struggle for liberty and law and order and equal rights, an earlier battle in which ennobled these fields of yours. In this campaign of 1904, the Democratic party demands public as well as private obedience to law, public as well as private practice of peace, a scrupulous assertion and defense by all in authority under the United States of the sacred and fundamental American right of self-government, the abolition of the monopolies created by that system of corrupting special privilege miscalled "protection," a return to public economy and simplicity of life in official station and a resolute investigation of the federal department. It is with these timely and living questions that we ask the country to deal at this election.

If the Democratic program represent, on the one hand, genuine and courageous progress along the only true path for a free and industrial people, on the other hand, it represents nothing new, but only a return to original American doctrine. The soundness of that doctrine has been demonstrated by the splendid and beneficent results of our general trend of obedience to it during a century and more. It has been demonstrated hardly less by the corruptions and calamities which have followed departures or exceptions from it whenever made by our people or by our national administration.

The departures and exceptions are serious indeed which the present Republican administration proposes, and some of which it has carried out, from this body of doctrine. The Democratic party, on the other hand, finds its necessity, if not its duty, in a vindication of the original ideals upon which the prosperity of our republic and the glory of its citizenship have been built up. The campaign is truly concerned with underlying tendencies even more than with the instant decision of concrete and practical problems. We are asked to say by our votes what kind of an office

we would have the American presidency be,-to what kind of moral and material end we would have the American people direct their marvellous energies.

The speech of Mr. Hay, the Secretary of State, on the fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the Republican party, at Jackson, Michigan, on July 6th, and the speech of Mr. Root, lately Secretary of War, as chairman of the Republican convention at Chicago, on June 21st, were evidently prepared in concert, and long before their delivery, to be read together as the chief authorized appeal of the Republican party. Two million copies are said to have been distributed, all handsomely and, if the title page be credible, "privately" printed. They have, and with skill and eloquence, said the best that can be said for Mr. Roosevelt's election. And in their speeches I find an all-sufficient Democratic text. For their fundamental note is one of fear lest the American people shall believe that the Republican effort during its last seven years of renewed power has been to tear the republic from its long and splendid progress in democratic freedom and humanity. Their claim is that, after all, there does not rest upon them any burden of proof that the new departure is wise. For their audacious affirmation is that there has been no new departure,—that we have all misunderstood the President's speeches about our new "world power" and the rest of his strident and boastful talk. The chief Republican orators now say that recent Republican achievement and policy have been soberly and patiently kept within old and tried traditions.

REPUBLICANS ON THE DEFENSIVE.

Notwithstanding their manner of jubilant assertion, they are, in substance, speeches of conscious defense and even anxious excuse. They rest the case for Mr. Roosevelt's election upon four propositions. They say, first, that Our increase in population, wealth and power since their party came in power in 1861 is an all-sufficient demonstration that Republican power means prosperity, and that Democratic power means adversity. They say, secondly, that the Republican party of our day is a faithful and scrupulous follower of Abraham Lincoln; that they who would have the Republic continue upon the humanitarian impulse which dominated our politics from and after the Chicago platform of 1860, must remain in the Republican party, for its policy since 1897 has been the flower and fruit of that very impulse. Thirdly, they say that the present tariff has created and now preserves the industrial welfare of the United States and its high rates of wages and profits; that its maintenance is the first and most sacred of political causes; and that it ought not to be readjusted or revised. And their fourth proposition is that President Roosevelt's three years of genuine power, since he escaped from the immediate shadow of his predecessor's death, prove him to be a statesman of "far-sighted wisdom," of "endless patience," of "serious reflection," one who "takes infinite

pains to get at the facts before he acts," whose maxim is that "the laws in this country are made to be obeyed whether it is safe or not," and the thought oftenest in whose heart "in times of doubt and difficulty * * * is 'What in such a case would

Lincoln have done?'

Such is the Republican case deliberately presented by the most skillful of Republican advocates. Does it fit the common sense and common knowledge of the American people?

INCREASE IN WEALTH IS DUE TO REPUBLICANS?

Take the first proposition. Is it true that our increase in wealth and prosperity since the rise of the Republican party has been its work, its glory? Was it an appeal to truth for Mr. Hay to treat as the result of "Fifty Years of the Republican Party" our increase in population between 1850 and 1900, our fourfold increase in farming acreage, our five-fold increase in corn crop and six-fold increase in wheat crop, our increase in manufacturing capital from $500,000,000 to $10,000,000,000? Does any argument deserve less respect from one who has mastered that first rule of reasoning which bids him not infer that event A is the effective and sole cause of event B merely because in order of time event B comes with or after event A? Were there not in the United States fertile soil and moderate suns and rains, the brains and hands and inventive genius of American men and women, liberty, law and order,-all these before there was a Republican party; and were not they the prime cause of our prosperity? The growth of American population and wealth between the peace of 1783 and the inauguration of John Adams in 1797 was but a small fraction of the like growth under McKinley and Roosevelt.

And in those fourteen years, the years when Franklin and Jefferson and Hamilton and Madison, under the auspices of the noble, unboastful character of the Father of his Country, established our republic, our material growth in absolute figures was small indeed, our railroad mileage nought. Were those earlier statesmen dwarfs, therefore, in comparison with the latter-day Titans, who have dwelt in the White House since March, 1897? What years, O American men and women, have done more, material and moral, than those early ones for their own generation, what years more for this very Twentieth Century prosperity of ours? Is it the Lincoln doctrine, or was it ever, that the merit of moral and political causes is measurable by the wealth and luxury accumulated at the very time of their operation? Is it not the doctrine of prophets and apostles and the lesson of all practical history, that self-denial, simplicity, economy, righteousness, sobriety, lead on,-not instantly but after patient years, to power and wealth? Would not Republican orators give better promise for future fruits of present day Republican administration,-if they could rather and truly claim for their party under President

Roosevelt an enforcement of equal rights, a rigorous economy, a punctilious regard for law?

"PRESENT WEALTH, PRESENT VIRTUE," A SHALLOW SOPHISTRY.

But if this doctrine of Present wealth, therefore present virtue in present ruling politics, be not a shallow sophistry, still see with what absurd unfairness it is applied. Do Republican apologists say, dare they say,-what alone would be relevant to the political problem, that during the forty-four years since their party came into power, the progress of our country has been as great, from year to year, as during the sixty years of general Democratic supremacy before the Čivi! War? If the Republican party may justly ask another lease of power because from 1860 to 1900 our population increased from 31,000,000 to 76,000,000 or 36 per cent. per decade, why may not the Democrats with greater justice ask their return to power because from 1800 to 1860, the increase was from 5,300,000 to 31,443,000 or 82 per cent. in each decade.* Was not the increase in the decade, 1850-1860,-and in spite of slavery,-from 23,000,000 to 31,000,000, or at the same rate as in the decades, 1860-1900? If the increase in total wealth between 1860 and 1900 was from $16,000,000,000 to $90,000,000,000, or 116 per cent. per decade, and in wealth per capita of population from $513.92 to $1,235.86 or 35 per cent. per decade, -was not the Democratic increase in total wealth between 1850 and 1860 from $7,000,000,000 to $16,000,000,000 or 128 per cent. for the decade, being still larger than the Republican, and in wealth per capita from $307.69 to $513.93, or at the rate of 67 per cent. for the decade, nearly double the Republican rate?

Although the value of farms and farm property increased from $7,980,000,000 in 1860 to $20,514,000,000 in 1900 or at the rate of 39 per cent. in each decade, was not the increase from $3,967,000,000 in 1850 to $7,980,000,000 in 1860, or at the rate of 100 per cent. per decade; and were not, therefore, Democratic auspices far more favorable to prosperity than Republican? Although the corn crop increased from 838 million bushels in 1860 to 2,105 millions in 1900 or at the rate of 37 per cent. in each decade, was not the increase from 377 millions in 1840 to 838 millions in 1860, or at the rate of 61 per cent. in each decade; and if, therefore, we wish large increase in the next four years, ought we not to prefer a Democratic president? Even if the wheat crop increased from 173 millions of bushels in 1860 to 552 millions in 1900, or at the rate of 50 per cent. in each decade, did it not increase from 84,000,000 in 1840 to 173,000,000 in 1860, or at the larger rate of 53 per cent. per decade?

* All my statistics are taken from the Summary of Commerce and Finance for May, 1904, issued by the Bureau of Statistics, Department of Commerce and Labor. For total wealth and other data before 1850, there are no official figures. In each case the percentages are computed upon the earlier figure given.