UCSB LIBRARY 
 
 . SPEECH 
 
 r 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. JOHN E. RUSSELL, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 Democratic Ratification Meeting, 
 
 HELD IN BOSTON, OCTOBER 9, 1893. 
 
 On being introduced, Mr. John E. Russell, the Democratic 
 Candidate for Governor, said : 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : This great gathering of the 
 Democracy in Boston's largest hall, and the enthusiasm of the occasion, is 
 a good opening of our campaign. 
 
 Our opponents held their convention here but a few hours ago. A 
 quiet Sunday has intervened to cool the air, and the eloquence of the speakers 
 in describing the effect of the legislation of the Harrison administration is 
 now only one more of the proud memories of their party. 
 
 I read the address of the chairman with a pleasure I have rarely felt, 
 and I regret to think that such faith and enthusiasm must perish in actual 
 contact with his associates. I would like to quote, would time allow, the 
 whole of the passage in which he describes the difference between the 
 parties. It contains much truth, though somewhat obscured by the richness 
 of the language. 
 
 It is the part beginning : " The underlying doctrine of our opponents, 
 their bed-rock belief is what the French call laissez faire that of letting 
 things take their natural course. This is the generality which glitters until 
 it dazzles the gaze of the virtuous." 
 
 This was stated in a little different language by Edmund Burke, 
 (I quote from memory,) who said the American colonies had flourished from 
 " that salutary neglect of government under which generous nature had 
 taken her own way to perfection." It was also remarked by Thomas Jefferson 
 that the sum of good government is in equal laws that establish order 
 and do justice, but leave men to pursue their own paths of industry or im- 
 provement. These probably were Grover Cleveland's authorities when he 
 said : " The limit between the proper subjects of governmental control and
 
 those which can be more fittingly left to the moral sense of the citizen should 
 be carefully kept in view." 
 
 Then Colonel Bancroft, " scorning the misleading jeers " of the Demo- 
 crats, tells us that the Republican party " is distinctly and emphatically a 
 party of interference." 
 
 Republican Party Meddlesome and Interfering. 
 
 I always contended that was its character, and I am glad to have the 
 authority of the President of that Convention for it. His speech bristles all 
 over with allusions to the evils of intemperance and the power of the saloon, 
 and the purpose of the Republican party to interfere to promote sobriety. 
 Governor Robinson, however, who remembers his second campaign, draws it 
 mild in his temperance resolution. 
 
 A good way to promote temperance would be to revive the old Repub- 
 lican cry of reform within the party ; begin with your Saturday clubs that 
 mix good dinners with indigestible politics. 
 
 The Saturday evening's Record hastens to say : " We judge from Colonel 
 Bancroft's speech to-day that the temperance issue will be made one of the 
 chief topics of the State campaign, though Mr. Russell has stated that he will 
 force the fighting on the financial line. Mr. Greenhalge will have a chance 
 to make him discuss the saloon question." 
 
 Mr. Greenhalge will have no chance to do so ; we will save him the trou- 
 ble. We are not hypocrites on this question. The people know just where we 
 stand. We are opposed to prohibition, both constitutional and statutory. 
 We approve of local option. 
 
 Now, will Mr. Greenhalge take this vexed question out of doubt by stat- 
 ing clearly what he believes should be done by legislation for temperance ? 
 If he is elected will he recommend prohibitory legislation and, I would 
 say in the words of Colonel Bancroft, " We want no glittering generalities 
 to dazzle the gaze of the virtuous." 
 
 As to the financial question, we thank the Record for the hint. Mr. 
 Robinson says : " We believe in the national bank system, one of the great 
 results of the war, and in its extension and amendment. We are utterly 
 opposed to the restoration of the State bank currency demanded by the 
 Democratic party." 
 
 Like many of Mr. Robinson's platform statements, this one is not 
 correct. The Democratic party makes no demand for free State banks ; but 
 it is in order for Mr. Greenhalge to explain how his party would perpetuate 
 the national bank system. How would they extend it ? John Sherman and 
 J. H. Walker speak for the party on finance in rather louder tones than can 
 be used by Governor Robinson. 
 
 Another question for Mr. Greenhalge. In his speech he said of delay in 
 the Senate : " Let them go to the armory of parliamentary weapons if their 
 hearts fail them not ; let them draw from thence the flashing blade with which 
 Thomas B. Reed dealt such valiant blows, and they may have as allies the 
 sage of Worcester."
 
 These be brave words, my masters, but will Mr. Greenhalge, in the inter- 
 est of the country, explain how the power of the Speaker of the House can 
 be assumed by the Moderator of the Senate, and also state if he is authorized 
 to say that Messrs. Hoar and Lodge will assist in securing such power ? 
 
 Their resolutions are made up by adopting several from our platform, 
 which shows the wisdom of their late convention, and, aside from these, 
 contain the stuffed clubs, stage properties and stationary points of Repub- 
 lican doctrine, now only useful from which to mark the progress of political 
 thought. They agree with Mr. Lodge's speech in imputing the difficulties of 
 the time to the action of the people in choosing their rulers, and declare that 
 a majority of the people, acting in obedience to the constitution, cannot be 
 trusted to administer the government. 
 
 Our Government One of Laws, Not of Men. 
 
 Gentlemen, ours is a government, not of men, but of laws. Our general 
 elections are held in obedience to the laws, and I submit to you that, if it is 
 true that our people cannot safely change their rulers under these laws ; if, in 
 the second century of our constitution, a majority of the people inaliena- 
 bly endowed with suffrage cannot be trusted, then Republican government is 
 no longer a successful experiment. No, gentlemen, our opponents labor 
 under the conceit that their party organization is the government ; the waning 
 of their power seems to them a dissolution of our system, while, in fact, 
 the fall of political parties has no more effect in a government of the people 
 than the disappearance of the heathen gods of Olympus 1900 years ago 
 affected the affairs of mankind. This is a government of the people. It is 
 carried on under Providence by the daily toil of humble men. Politicians 
 may hinder, but they cannot overthrow equal rights and equal burdens ; add 
 to that, good will toward all men, and you have a true Democracy. 
 
 Their pretence that it was not the legislation of the Republican party 
 which caused the public distress, but the course adopted by the people to 
 remedy the evil, is not shared by any independent newspaper or by any 
 financial authority here or in Europe. Among the notable financial collapses 
 of the period there is only one that can be chargeable to the election of Mr. 
 Cleveland, and that is the bankruptcy of Mr. Foster. I have no doubt that 
 calamity might have been postponed if he had not been turned out of the 
 treasury. 
 
 Mr. Lodge finds reasons for what he calls a want of confidence, in the 
 election of Mr. Cleveland. He is four years too late. The choice of Mr. Harri- 
 son in a canvass managed by Quay and Dudley, with money collected of inter- 
 ests that were to be repaid by a McKinley tariff and silver legislation, was a 
 blow under which confidence, even in our institutions, staggered. This was 
 followed by the " billion dollar Congress." There is no worse government 
 than a corrupt republic. When the money of the rich is used to control the 
 suffrage of the poor, the fine, sweet spirit of the government founded by our 
 fathers is frightened away. It is no longer the government of the people, 
 and it hastens to swift decay. 
 
 The first want of political confidence manifested itself in the election of
 
 1890. Here the party in power met a defeat more humiliating than anything 
 in our history. It was an expression of the deliberate sense of the people, 
 and would have effected a change in the views of any other body of men 
 charged with responsibility, except those who have been educated in the habit 
 of treating the people with contempt. The next loss of confidence in the 
 financial world was shown when our securities, held abroad, began to return, 
 and gold began to flow to Europe. 
 
 McKinley Tariff Intended to Restrict Commerce and Reduce Revenue, 
 
 Not to Produce It. 
 
 The passage of the McKinley act was an avowed attempt to cut off for- 
 eign trade, to restrict commerce, and bore the astonishing title " An act to 
 reduce revenue." Taxation to reduce revenue is certainly not contemplated 
 in the constitution. This was a bill reducing the revenue by adding taxes to 
 be collected by others. It was intended to restrict commerce and cut off for- 
 eign trade. 
 
 These are strange phrases in the mouths of statesmen, and show how far 
 the Republicans have drifted from the true path of national prosperity and 
 progress. 
 
 Legislation with such titles becomes the cause of distrust and alarm. 
 Imagine Madison, the leader of the first House of Representatives under 
 the constitution, bringing in a tax bill to reduce revenue, to restrict trade, 
 and cut off commerce. 
 
 He, and all the men of his time, who had made the country free of 
 England upon the ground of unjust taxation, knew that the highest power del 
 egated by the people to government is the right to tax, and that this right is 
 strictly limited to the needs of government. 
 
 They felt what John Marshall said, that the power to tax is the power to 
 destroy, and that all the taxes the people pay the treasury should receive. In 
 those days, in the words of Hamilton, commerce was the darling object of 
 nations ; to hamper or cut it off was piracy. The McKinley bill was con- 
 trary to the wishes of the people. In the canvass of '88 the Republicans had 
 promised a revision of the tariff. The people understood that it was to be a 
 reduction ; they were answered by the McKinley bill. Let us consider the 
 effect of this act on business. 
 
 While it greatly reduced the revenue on articles not produced in the 
 country, it enormously increased the taxes on goods entering into competi- 
 tion with our own manufactures. In the time given before it went into effect, 
 merchants used all their capital and strained their credit in the importation 
 of stock. Foreigners made heavy consignments to every port, so that 
 bonded warehouses were crowded and the money market deranged by the 
 payment of duties. This piled up foreign debt, and was a new reason for 
 the export of gold. The period of the growth of trusts and combinations 
 went rapidly forward. Wages did not rise, and the prices of farm products 
 continued to decline, while the life blood of trade flowed out of the country 
 in an increasing stream.
 
 More than a year ago large enterprises expecting to use foreign capital 
 found it could not be had. But no statesman would, even in the heat of dis- 
 cussion, be so uncandid, so regardless of thoughtful opinion, as to attribute 
 our financial and business difficulties solely to political movements, or even to 
 unwise legislation. Every one must feel the force of the poet's lines : 
 
 " How small of all that human hearts endure, 
 The part that kings or laws can cause or cure." 
 
 Causes of Financial Distrust 
 
 We attribute the loss of confidence in the stable character of our currency 
 to the Sherman law, and there was a measure of business derangement caused 
 by the McKinley tariff. The arbitrary use of the great power of the speaker 
 by Mr. Reed, the dangerous folly of the force bill, and disregard of the 
 changed temper of the people, were powerful causes of trouble, but there 
 were other forces at work beyond our control that were sure to shake the airy 
 towers of our soaring financial fabric. 
 
 The whole civilized world is enclosed in a circle which grows smaller 
 every year. No financial storm can rage in any country of Europe, without 
 affecting the atmosphere of the American market. The barometer of the 
 stock exchange is common to all mankind. 
 
 The Panama Canal, with its frightful loss of French savings, the collapse 
 of the copper syndicate, the English losses in Argentina, causing the Baring 
 failure, and subsequent decline of trade, the effect of the losses from wars and 
 revolutions all over South and Central America, and the failures of Australian 
 banks were as certain to reach us as the hurricane born in tropic heats 
 is to sweep over intervening seas and desolate distant shores. Added to this 
 were thousands of miles of western railroads, built in advance of business ; 
 mortgaged farms and falling prices of their produce ; the great bubbles of 
 industrial trusts which had absorbed capital ; bond and endowment companies 
 which had taken the savings of the people all this was to be liquidated. 
 
 At that time our political condition had been brought about by the Har- 
 rison adminstration. The policy of his party was in full control and expected 
 to retain it. There was not a Democrat in any public office from which he 
 could be removed, and Mr. Harrison, in scorn of public opinion and to the 
 scandal of the country, was renominated by a convention composed of a 
 majority of federal office-holders. 
 
 The result of that election was a repudiation of the Republican party. I am 
 sorry to say that the leaders of the defeated party were neither wise nor patriotic 
 in their defeat. They began to impute the growing difficulties which shadowed 
 the last days of their rule to the demand of the people for a change of tariff policy. 
 
 An empty treasury managed by bankrupts, a silver law draining the 
 country of gold, protection which had turned the taxes into private coffers, a 
 pension list swollen for the corruption of voters, were not mentioned, but it 
 was declared that the impending troubles were due to the determination of 
 the people to alter the policy which was said to have caused the evil. Un- 
 patriotic attempts were kept up in the partisan press against an administra*
 
 tion not yet formed ; people were alarmed by warnings solemnly uttered, by 
 men in high positions, in regard to their savings and means of living. All of 
 this venomous talk was repeated in the British press and made the basis 
 of warning to investors, and we had a result well known to everybody. 
 Under the usual course of procedure, not a law could be altered until next 
 winter. Up to that time the grind of the bones of the people to make the 
 bread of silver miners and protected interests had to go on until Congress 
 stopped the mill. 
 
 Democrats Not Responsible for the Sherman Act. 
 
 Mr. Cleveland called Congress in extra session four months before its 
 time, to repeal laws signed by Benjamin Harrison. Now the outcry is against 
 us for being too slow about it. The House of Representatives, coming 
 directly from the people, acted in response to their will. The Senate dis- 
 regards the people, and this emphasizes the resolution in our platform calling 
 for the election of senators by the people. 
 
 Parties are about evenly divided in the Senate. The leaders of the Repub- 
 lican party are on the silver side, and there is much political management in the 
 delay. The resolutions and speeches of the convention, whose echoes still 
 linger in this hall, show who is getting party advantage out of it. It is the 
 same game that the Republicans played in the House on the free coinage 
 question. No one can deny that there are many Republicans in all parts of 
 the country who favor free silver and cheap money of any kind. Each one 
 of the so-called silver States has been a Republican rotten borough. Not a 
 Democrat has represented them ; not an electoral vote did they ever give us. 
 They are for free coinage as they are for the McKinley system, for the money 
 and the politics in both of them. The Democrats that are for free silver rep- 
 resent despair of great interests impoverished by exaction ; the mistaken, but 
 not merely selfish, reaching out for help ; such a desire as can be met by argu- 
 ment and by showing them a more excellent way. 
 
 Anti-tariff Plank of Chicago Platform. 
 
 Our opponents attack us with the tariff plank of the Chicago convention. 
 
 That plank was the direct result of the feeling produced by the McKin- 
 ley tariff. This bill has done more to break down the doctrine of protection 
 than all the arguments that have ever been made. Democratic conventions 
 have always opposed taxes solely for protection as unjust and unconstitu- 
 tional ; they have held that the right of taxing for protection was derived from 
 the revenue power and was of necessity incidental to it, and that duties solely 
 for protection without revenue cannot be constitutionally laid. They also be- 
 lieve, with John Sherman, that no tariff can be made that will yield our re- 
 quired revenue without affording ample incidental protection to manufacturers. 
 
 It is evidently the word " robbery," used in our platform, to which they 
 object. But I am sure that in the works of all writers, and the speeches of 
 statesmen, from the dawn of liberty until our day, unnecessary taxation has 
 been called by that name, much more so when the tax doesn't even reach 
 the treasury, but goes to enrich individuals. Need we quarrel over words ?
 
 I say unjust taxation and robbery are convertible terms. The late Justice 
 Miller, of the supreme court, in his famous definition of protection, said it was 
 robbery under form of law. Justice Cooley, in his work on constitutional 
 limitations, says : " A tax can have no other basis than the raising of rev- 
 enue for public purposes, and all taxes, that have not this basis, are tyrannical 
 and unlawful." 
 
 John Bright, the great English reformer, the friend of labor and liberty, 
 in the English struggle against commercial restrictions and class legislation, 
 said to the workmen of Manchester : " It is protection that makes you work 
 and work, scramble and scramble, starve, it may be, in order that out of the 
 produce of your industry, out of the scanty wages of the many, something 
 may be taken by law, and given to the rich by whom the law was made." It 
 was in that same contest that the illustrious Irish patriot, the immortal 
 Daniel O'Connell, in his speech in Covent Garden, said : "The real meaning 
 of protection is robbery, robbery of the poor by the rich." 
 
 No, gentlemen, we did not use the wrong word. We used a term that, in 
 every struggle for liberty, every contest for equal rights and equal burdens, 
 has been used to describe unjust taxation. 
 
 But in regard to our platform, they forgot to mention that we denounced 
 the Sherman act, .and declared for a sound currency. 
 
 We also offered a tariff plank mainly taken from the 1884 platform of our 
 party. 
 
 But mark the effect on sentiment of the McKinley bill how it has 
 aroused public animosity. The convention, under the lead of Mr. Neal of 
 Ohio, now candidate for Governor, threw out our old-fashioned plank and 
 adopted the robbery declaration. More than that, the people elected a 
 President on it. But, gentlemen, whatever may be said in platforms, no 
 Democrat under the responsibility of dealing with our system is inclined to 
 violent action. 
 
 Look at our history ; the record of the Mills bill, which sensible people 
 interested in reasonable protection now wish had been law ; note the conser- 
 vative character of the present committee under the lead of William L. Wilson, 
 a broad and cautious statesman from a manufacturing State ; remember that 
 one of the most influential men in the committee is our own Stevens, and then, 
 in all honesty and soberness, confess that the true interests of all the people 
 are in safe hands. We all agree that tariff for revenue is not to be had by 
 violent action, but must be approached by moderate steps. 
 
 It is plain from much that has been said, that protected partisans are 
 afraid our action will be moderate, and they wish us to be destructive and 
 radical. They want to make political capital out of public distress. They 
 are swift to declare it is easily possible to raise every dollar necessary for 
 running expenses by the taxes on whiskey, beer and tobacco, and new direct 
 taxes can be devised to provide for interest and pensions and the burden be 
 lifted from the backs of labor and agriculture. We know this very well, but 
 we recognize that consideration is due to interests which have been honestly
 
 UCSB LIBRARY 
 
 8 
 
 established under that policy, and no Democrat wishes to do them injustice. 
 The recent infant industries will be nourished there is no fear of that. 
 The danger to protection is not from the Democratic idea of carefully adjusted 
 tariff reform, but from the uncontrolled rage of disappointed Republicans. 
 
 No one denies that the Sherman law was part of the protection policy. 
 It was the share demanded by the mining States in return for their support. 
 The exigency of the country has demanded that this bargain shall be 
 repudiated. Now the silver wing of the Republican party shows that it 
 means to take revenge. Here is no question of principle, no statesmanlike 
 desire to be just, none of the moderation characteristic of our party and 
 President, but bitter rage and even treasonable threats. This is the result 
 of base bargains and greedy abuse of law. To-day the hope and trust of 
 patriotic citizens who wish well to all parts of the country is in the Ad- 
 ministration of Grover Cleveland. 
 
 Partisan Prejudices of Republicans. 
 
 Except in their vague allusion to temperance legislation and to the glory 
 of the commonwealth, no one would suppose that this was a State election 
 in which not a federal officer is to be chosen. We all love the commonwealth ; 
 we hope for her prosperity, we are zealous for her honor ; but the honor and 
 glory of the commonwealth are not in official legislatures, councils and com- 
 missions, but in the people who make the State. Their affairs are not 
 promoted by lifting high the party standard, but by improvements in methods 
 of administration to the end that government, which is the instrument of the 
 people and valuable only according to its usefulness, shall be more efficient, 
 less expensive and more directly responsible to the people. We urge the 
 abolition of the council ; we show the people the irresponsible character of the 
 many commissions which carry on the affairs of state, a system which has 
 grown to be a flabby fungus in the unwholesome shadow of party power. 
 
 In the ancient days of the Puritan colony, a magistrate could not be 
 chosen unless he was sound on "fixed fate," "freewill," and "fore-knowledge 
 absolute," things that could not be discussed without, as John Milton said, 
 "iinding no end m wandering mazes lost.'' 
 
 To-day a fearful cry is heard that a citizen may be made Governor who 
 does not agree with Harrison and McKinley, but holds to theories of public 
 taxation that were advocated by the founders of the constitution and by every 
 public man, merchant and manufacturer of Massachusetts as recently as 1860. 
 What a danger to the commonwealth to elect a man holding the opinions 
 on taxation that were held by John A. Andrew, Charles Sumner and Henry 
 Wilson. The speeches and votes of Mr. Wilson in the Senate on the tariff of 
 1857 are nearer to free trade than we can hope to get if the Democrats were to 
 control legislation for a generation. 
 
 A defeat of our party at this time will be to lose all the ground that has 
 been gained in the State ; it will be leaving the broad road which has been 
 opened for the narrow paths of partisan rule, and I am confident that thought- 
 ful citizens will so regard it.