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S P E K C H 
 
 SAMUEL J. TILDEN 
 
 DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION, 
 
 
 ROCHESTER, OCTORER 4, 1871. 
 
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 Reverently I thank God that when midnight darkness brooded 
 over the Republic, and the true men who were guarding the sacred 
 traditions of free government created by Jefferson and vindicated 
 by Jackson— and upheld in our State by the Clintons, Tompkins, 
 Van Buren, Wright and Marcy— sat at their watch despondent, the 
 uplifted cloud begins to show its silver lining and there is revealed 
 the dawn of a new and better day. The Democracy, burnishing 
 its armor and purifying its ranks, advances to fight anew the battle 
 against centralism and corruption to which seventy-five years ago 
 it was first led by Thomas Jefierson in the nation and by George 
 Clinton in this State. 
 
 Those dangers have recently assumed vastly greater dimensions 
 than at the birth or at any other time during the existence of the 
 Republic. Mankind naturally fear the evils they have last expe- 
 rienced, even after those evils have passed away and others, of the 
 opposite character, have taken their place. It is a maxim of his- 
 tory that government is always strengthened by unsuccessful in- 
 surrection. We have just emerged from a vast civil war in which 
 we have conquered a rebellion undertaken to break up our federal 
 government. Disunion is crushed, slavery is dead forever, the 
 suffrage is irreversibly given to the colored race, the original object 
 of the war is accomplished, every natural result is attained ; and 
 yet in our recoil from a danger completely passed we rush blindly 
 towards the opposite peril. The equilibrium of our whole political 
 system is in danger of being overthrown, and a despotic and 
 corrupt centralism established. The whole value of the arrange- 
 
iiK'iil l>y wliirh our world is kej>t in its place in the solar system 
 is in the balance between two opposing forces. It would matter 
 little to us which of these forces should be allowed to prevail. If 
 the centrifugal tendency should dominate, our planet would shoot 
 madly into the realms of endless space, far away from the source of 
 heat and light and life, until every living thing upon its surface 
 Avould perish. If the centripetal tendency should prevail, the earth 
 would rush with inconceivable velocity towards the sun until it 
 would be engulfed in the burning mass. 
 
 So it is with the adjustment of powers between the State and 
 Federal governments ; disunion and centralization are equally fatal 
 to good government. Disunion would generate the centralism of 
 military despotism in the separate States. Centralism attempted 
 over areas and populations so vast would break the parts asunder 
 and fill our continent, as it has every other, with rival nations. 
 
 Our wise ancestors devised the only system possible to avoid these 
 opposite evils. They formed a Federal government to manage our 
 foreign relations, to maintain peace and unity between the States, 
 and to administer a few exceptional functions of common interest ; 
 and they left the great residuary mass of governmental powers to 
 the States. The Deraoci-atic party has carried on the Federal gov- 
 ernment for fifty of tlie seventy years of the present century. 
 
 Its creed is comprised in two ideas : First, to limit as much as pos- 
 sil)le all governmental power, enlarging always and everywhere the 
 domain of in«li\ idual judgment and action ; secondly, to throw back 
 the governmental ])owers necessary to be exercised as much as possi- 
 ble uj)on the States and the localities, a})proaching in every case the 
 individuals to be affected. These ideas dominate over the Demo- 
 cratic party, and find in it their best representative. The opposite 
 ideas — to meddle witli everything properly belonging to individ- 
 uals and to centralize all governmental powers — express the ten- 
 dencies of the Republican party. Under their inspiration the Fed- 
 
eral government is rapidly seizing u])on all the powers of human 
 society. It has assumed to regulate the suffrage and threatens to 
 take the control of all elections. It perverts the power to raise 
 revenue into a means of dictating what kinds of business men shall 
 employ their labor and capital in ; of giving bounties and granting 
 monopolies; of enriching favored classes by impoverishing the 
 earnings of the people. It has drawn within its power all the 
 banks ; it has begun to create insurance corporations, and it yearns 
 to take jurisdiction of all railroad companies. Its career of usurpa- 
 tion, if continued a few years longer, will involve all the business, 
 all the contracts and all the property of individuals, and will po[)U- 
 late Washington with the lobbies of thirty-seven States. 
 
 I oppose centralism because it is incompatil)le with civil liberty. 
 Forty millions of people, guided by a single hand, would sweep over 
 all dissent and all resistance of isolated or unorganized individuals. 
 Look at France, Half a million of office-holders and half a million 
 of soldiers moved from the centre make civil liberty impossible, 
 
 I oppose centralism because it creates an irresponsible power, and 
 an irresponsible power is always corrupt. A government ruling 
 all the affairs of individuals and localities from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific, from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, would be the 
 most incompetent for what it would undertake, the most oppres- 
 sive, the most irresponsible and the most corrupt government of 
 which history affords any example. It Avould repeat and exagge- 
 rate the crimes of the worst governments in the worst ages. Al- 
 ready the system is maturing its fatal fruits. Demoralization in 
 public trusts prevails to an extent never before known in tliis. coun- 
 try, and scarcely believed to be possible. 
 
 The mass of men of all parties are pure in their intentions, but 
 parties differ in the tendencies of their principles and measures and 
 the ideal standards and training of their leaders. The Democratic 
 party from its foundation, three-quarters of a century ago, has held 
 
and acted upon ideas which tend to j^^irity in government. It has 
 exacted in its leaders a higher standard of oiRcial purity than any other 
 party in the country. It has never elected to the presidency any man 
 of as low a standard of official life as either of the three Republican 
 presidents. Every Democratic national convention would, by com- 
 mon consent, liave rejected from its nomination a man who had filled 
 the public offices with his relatives, or who had been enriched by 
 costly presents while exercising the immense power of the presi- 
 dency to promote men's interest, or gratify men's ambition. Even 
 in the corrupt times of James the First, the greatest intellect which 
 has appeared among men, Bacon, was impeached by our ancestors, 
 because, as Lord High Chancellor of England, he had received 
 presents from suitors in causes depending before him. His defence 
 was that he had decided those causes against the parties which had 
 made the presents. Grant has decided the causes of those who 
 were candidates for the great civil trusts of the country in favor of 
 those who made him presents. 
 
 Jeffisrson left among the noble traditions of his precej^t and 
 example the maxims that he would not appoint relatives to office, 
 whatever their fitness, and that while in official life, he would do 
 nothing to increase his fortune. He would keep himself not only 
 pure, but he would hold high the standard of public morality. 
 
 I do not wish to speak harshly of the illustrious soldier who 
 fills the presidential chair. He may not have been conscious 
 of the evil in the fatal example Avhich he has set. But when 
 the two ideas of personal gain and the bestowal of office are 
 allowed, to be in one mind at the same time they will become asso- 
 ciated, and it is but a step to the sale of the greatest trusts. Intel- 
 lect, training, virtue, will soon succumb to wealth. Vulgai- mil- 
 lionaires will grasp the highest seats of honor and power as they 
 would put a new emblazonment on their carriages or a gaudy 
 livery upon their servants. 
 
I tui'n now to our own State. The era of Democratic ascendency 
 was the twenty-five years under the Constitution of 1821. Van 
 Buren, Marcy, Wright and Flagg ruled. They were men of 
 absolute personal lionor and truth, and in all the counties they 
 attracted to themselves similar men. They wielded party power 
 not only for pure measures but for honest men. If a young man 
 who had served one session in the Legislature came back to 
 lobby, he lost his standing with the party leaders. Corruption 
 in the legislative bodies was almost unknown. Even in 1836, in 
 the wild speculation of that time, three Democratic senators who 
 had kept back a bill aljout the Harlem railroad, in order to buy 
 some of its stock, were compelled to resign by a Democratic 
 Senate, and Young and Van Shaack resigned their seats because 
 these senators had not been expelled. 
 
 Take the twenty-five years which followed as the era of the 
 ascendency of the Republican party, and of that party from 
 which it sprang. Your legislative bodies are invariably found 
 — almost immediately they became — purchasable. Twice within 
 that time, the gi'eat office of Senator of the United States — the 
 seat of Clinton, Van Buren, Wright and Marcy — has been put 
 up at auction and knocked down to the best bidder. It was 
 not in an assembly of German or Irish citizens, it was not among 
 Democrats, but it was in the caucuses of Republican members 
 of the Senate and Assembly, elected by the Republicans of the 
 rural districts. 
 
 The municipal corruptions of New York city are the results 
 of irresponsible power acting in the secrecy of bureaus and com- 
 missions. They are the outgrowth of twenty years of Republi- 
 can legislation at Albany, and a partnership of plunder between 
 men of both parties established during that period. 
 
 I have said this much as a demand of historical justice, I have 
 no heart for such discussions. I know the mass of Republican 
 
/ 
 
 friends are of good intentions. I have no taste for a rivalry 
 which is degraded into a mei'e comparison of tlie relative size 
 of the loprous sores that are on the bodies of the respective 
 parties. Let us rather engage in a generous emulation. Let the 
 people judge us by v^^hat we do to cleanse our parties, and to purify 
 the official trusts of the country, and to elevate the standard of 
 public morality. 
 
 Principles are the test of political character. The Democracy 
 always made fidelity to official trust and justice to the toiling 
 masses, who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, a fun- 
 damental article in the party creed. It is time now to proclaim 
 and to enforce the decree that whoever plunders the people, though 
 he steal the livery of heaven to serve the devil in, is no Democrat. 
 
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