report from himself alone. It was not accepted, but the platform as presented by the majority of the committee was approved, on a vote of 714% to 97%, amid great applause. Butler's rejected plank was as follows: Resolved, That no taxes, direct or indirect, can be rightfully imposed upon the people except to meet the expenses of an economically administered Government. To bring taxation down to this point is true administrative revenue reform. The people will tolerate direct taxation for the ordinary expenses of the Government only in case of dire necessity or war, therefore the revenue necessary for such expenses should be raised by customs duties upon imports after the manner of our fathers. In levying such taxes two principles should be carefully observed: First, that all materials used in the arts and manufactures and the necessaries of life not produced in this country shall come free, and that all articles of luxury should be taxed as high as possible up to the collection point; second, that in imposing customs duties the law must be carefully adjusted to promote American enterprise and industries, not to create monopolies, and to cherish and foster American labor. PRINCIPLES OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. CHAPTER I. THE PRINCIPLES OF WASHINGTON. W ASHINGTON lived before the days of party politics. He exemplified his principles by his conduct, whether at the head of the army or of the civil Administration. He had studied well the principles of free governments in former ages and was well grounded in the faith. In his Farewell Address to the American people he left a legacy any party might well be proud of. Not because he was at the head of a so-called Democratic or Republican or any party, but because the few fundamental principles upon which rested the perpetuity of the Union which he announced have always been a part of the faith of the Democracy, does it become appropriate here to insert those principles. No person can be a sound Democrat who cannot give unqualified assent to them. In substance he announced the following principles: "The union of the government is the main pillar in the edifice of our real independence: the support of our tranquillity at home, our peace abroad; of our safety and our prosperity, yea, of the very liberty all so highly prize." He warned his countrymen that from different causes and from different quarters great pains would be taken (as was the case three-quarters of a century after that), and many artifices would be employed to weaken in the minds of the people the conviction of this great truth. He told them that this was a point in their political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies would most constantly and most actively, though covertly and insidiously, direct their assaults. He entreated them to cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to the Union, accustoming them to think and speak of it as the palladium of their political safety and prosperity, watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety, discountenancing whatever might even suggest a suspicion that it could in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frown upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our countrymen from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which link together the various parts of our common country. Whether he called himself a Democrat or not makes no difference, this principle of cherishing |