786 



UNITED STATES. 



every department, and from every officer of the 

 Government. 



Reform is necessary to put a stop to the profligate 

 waste of public lands, and their diversion from 

 actual settlers by the party in power, which has 

 squandered 200,000,000 acres upon railroads alone, 

 and out of more than thrice that aggregate has 

 disposed of less than a sixth directly to tillers of the 

 soil. 



Reform is necessary to correct the omissions of a 

 Republican Congress, and the errors of our treaties 

 and our diplomacy, which have stripped our fellow- 

 citizens of foreign birth and kindred race recrossing 

 the Atlantic of the shield of American citizenship, 

 and have exposed our brethren of the Pacific coast 

 to the incursions of a race not sprung from the same 

 great parent stock, and, in fact, now by law denied 

 citizenship through naturalization, as being neither 

 accustomed to the traditions of a progressive civili- 

 zation nor exercised in liberty under equal laws. 

 We denounce the policy which thus discards the 

 liberty-loving German, and tolerates a revival of the 

 coolie trade in Mongolian women imported for im- 

 moral purposes, and Mongolian men held to perform 

 servile-labor contracts, and demand such modifica- 

 tion of the treaty with the Chinese Empire, or such 

 legislation within constitutional limitations, as shall 



PllESIDfiNT'S HOUSE, WAdulAGTUN, I) C. 



prevent further importation or immigration of the 

 Mongolian race. 



Reform is necessary, and can never be effected but 

 by making it the controlling issue of the elections, 

 and lifting it above the two false issues with which 

 the office-holding class and the party in power seek 

 to smother it : 



1. The false issue with which they would enkindle 

 sectarian strife in respect to the public schools, of 

 which the establishment and support belong exclu- 

 sively to the several States, and which the Demo- 

 cratic party has cherished from their foundation, 

 and is resolved to maintain without prejudice or 

 preference for any class, sect, or creed, and without 

 largesses from the Treasury to any. 



2. Tne false issue by which they seek to light 

 anew the dying embers of sectional hate between 

 kindred peoples once estranged, but now reunited 

 in one indivisible republic and a common destiny. 



Reform is necessary in the civil service. Experi- 

 ence proves that efficient, economical conduct of the 

 governmental business is not possible if its civil 

 service be subject to change at every election, be a 



prize fought for at the ballot-box, be a brief reward 

 of party zeal, instead of posts of honor assigned for 

 proved competency, and held for fidelity in the pub- 

 lic employ ; that the dispensing of patronage should 

 neither be a tax upon the time of all our public men, 

 nor the instrument of their ambition. Here, again, 

 promises falsified in the performance attest that 

 the party in power can work out no practical or 

 salutary reform. 



Reform is necessary even more in the higher 

 grades of the public service. President, Vice-Presi- 

 dent, judges, Senators, Representatives, cabinet 

 officers these, and all others in authority, are the 

 people's servants. Their offices are not a private 

 perquisite ; they are a public trust. 



When the annals ot this republic show the dis- 

 grace and censure of a Vice-President ; a late Speak- 

 er of the House of Representatives marketing his 

 rulings as a presiding officer ; three Senators profiting 

 secretly by their votes as law-makers; five chairmen 

 of the leading committees of the late House of Rep- 

 resentatives exposed in jobbery ; a late Secretary of 

 the Treasury forcing balances in the public accounts ; 

 a late Attorney - General misappropriating public 

 funds ; a Secretary of the Navy enriched, or enrich- 

 ing friends, by percentages levied off the profits of 

 contractors with his department ; an embassador to 

 England engaged in a dis- 

 honorable speculation ; the 

 President's private secre- 

 tary barely escaping con- 

 viction upon trial for guilty 

 complicity in frauds upon 

 the revenue ; a Secretary 

 of War impeached for high 

 crimes and misdemeanors 

 the demonstration is 

 complete, that the first 

 step in reform must be the 

 people's choice of honest 

 men from another party, 

 lest the disease of one po- 

 litical organization infect 

 the body politic, and lest, 

 by making no change or 

 men or parties, we get no 

 change of measures and 

 no real reform. 



All these abuses, wrongs, 

 and crimes, the product of 

 sixteen years' ascendency 

 of the Republican party, 

 create a necessity for re- 

 form confessed by Re- 

 publicans themselves; but 

 their reformers are voted 

 down in convention and 



displaced from the cabinet. The party's mass of 

 honest voters is powerless to resist the eighty thou- 

 sand office-holders, its leaders and guides. 



Reform can only be had by a peaceful civic revo- 

 lution. We demand a change of system, a change 

 of Administration, a change of parties, that we may 

 have a change of measures and of men. 



Resolved, That this convention, representing the 

 Democratic party of the United States, do cordially 

 indorse the a'ction of the present House of Represent- 

 atives in reducing and curtailing the expenses of the 

 Federal Government, in cutting down salaries, ex- 

 travagant appropriations, and in abolishing useless 

 offices and places not required by the public neces- 

 sities ; and we shall trust to the firmness of the 

 Democratic members of the House that no commit- 

 tee of conference, and no misinterpretation of the 

 rules, will be allowed to defeat these wholesome 

 measures "of economy demanded by the country. 

 fiesolved, That the soldiers and sailors of the re- 



Eublic, and the widows and orphans of those who 

 ave fallen in battle, have a just claim upon the care, 

 protection, and gratitude of their fellow-citizens. 



