law of 1870 and 1874, cannot be used without renewed authority, have recently reappeared in our annual bills. The just and safe method is to appropriate specifically the expenditures which Congress is willing to authorize, so that the law shall itself show, as far as possible, both the object and the full amount of the appropriation.

One of the vicious party devices too often resorted to for avoiding responsibility for extravagance in appropriations is to cut down the annual bills below the actual amount necessary to carry on the government, announce to the country that a great reduction has been made in the interest of economy, and, after the elections are over, make up the necessary amounts by deficiency bills. This device has not been confined to any one party; for it requires not a little courage to make increased appropriations just before a Congressional election. But it is due to the Republican party to say that, during the last few years of their control in the House, the deficiency bills were smaller in the amounts appropriated than in any recent period of our history, having been reduced to $4,000,000 for the fiscal year 1875, $2,387,000 for the year 1876, and $834,000 for 1877, the last year for which the Republicans made the appropriations. This last sum was the smallest amount of deficiency in any year for more than a quarter of a century.

In contrast with this statement is the fact that, in the first year for which the Democratic House managed the appropriations, the deficiencies were $2,500,000; the second year, $15,213,000; and for the third (the current fiscal year), $3,500,000 of deficiencies have already been appropriated, and a large deficiency must yet be provided for.

Notwithstanding all the efforts that have been made to specify and limit the objects of appropriations, the custom prevailed until 1874 of appropriating considerable sums to each department under the head of "Contingent Expenses," the disbursement of which was left to the discretion of the heads of bureaus and executive departments. But in one of the annual bills of 1874 all these appropriations were carefully classified; and definite amounts were granted for different specific purposes, so that the sums left to be expended at the discretion of bureaus of departments were greatly reduced. This practice has since been followed in making up the annual bills.

In further illustration of reckless methods of appropriation,

I cite two items in the legislation of Congress at the last session.

By the act of July 19, 1848, three months' extra pay was granted to the officers and soldiers of our volunteer army who were engaged in the war with Mexico, the purpose of the act being to pay each such soldier, on his discharge from the army, a sum necessary to cover the time that it would be likely to take him to return home and secure employment. About $50,000 of this extra pay is still due, and a bill was introduced to appropriate a sufficient amount of money to complete the payment. An amendment was added to the bill, which so enlarged the provisions of the original act of 1848 as to grant three months' extra pay to all officers and soldiers of the regular army, and all officers, petty officers, seamen, and marines of the navy and revenue marine service, who were at any time employed in the prosecution of the Mexican war. This gratuity had never been asked for, and the provision probably passed without much notice of its real character. As estimated by the accounting officers of the Treasury Department, the amount appropriated by this act, thus enlarged, is $3,500,000, while the sum actually due was only $50,000.

The other instance marks the introduction of a still more dangerous kind of legislation. A bill was passed on the last day of the late session, creating an irredeemable debt of $250,000, the annual interest of which is to be paid to the trustees of a "Printing-House for the Blind," at Louisville, Kentucky, an establishment chartered by the State of Kentucky. The act puts the appropriation in the form of a national obligation, which cannot be repealed without the repudiation of a portion of the public debt.

Perhaps the most reprehensible method connected with appropriation bills has resulted from a change of one of the rules of the House, made in 1876, by which any general legislation germane to a bill may be in order if it retrenches expenditures. The construction recently given to this amended rule has resulted in putting a great mass of general legislation upon the appropriation bills, and has so overloaded the committee in charge of them as to render it quite impossible for its members to devote sufficient attention to the details of the appropriations proper. If this rule be continued in force, it will be likely to break down the Committee on Appropriations, and disperse the

annual bills to several committees, so that the legislation on that subject will not be managed by any one committee, nor in accordance with any general and comprehensive plan.

It is of the first importance that one strong, intelligent committee should have supervision of the whole work of drafting and putting in shape the bills for the appropriation of public money. That committee ought, every year, to present to Congress and the country a general and connected view of what we may fairly call our budget, showing, not only the aggregate of expenditures, but the general distribution of revenue to the several objects to be supported. To accomplish this work. thoroughly and comprehensively is all that any one committee can do; and any attempt to load general legislation upon their bills will be disastrous not only to general legislation, by making it fragmentary and incomplete, but especially so to the proper management of our fiscal affairs. This unwise rule furnished the temptation to the Democratic caucus to tack upon the two appropriation bills which failed at the last session of Congress the political legislation which has caused the extra session, and has done more to revive the unfortunate memories of the rebellion than any political event of the last ten years. The true policy is to separate all financial questions as far as possible from mere partisan politics, and bring to their discussion and management the best intelligence of all parties.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND PUBLIC

OPINION.

SPEECH DELIVERED IN CLEVELAND, OHIO,

OCTOBER 11, 1879.

ELLOW-CITIZENS,- The distinguished gentlemen who

FELL

have preceded me have covered the ground so completely and so admirably that I have a very easy task. I will pick up a few straws here and there over the broad field, and ask you for a few moments to look at them.

I take it for granted that every thoughtful, intelligent man would be glad, if he could, to be on the right side, believing that in the long run the right side will be the strong side. I take it for granted that every man would like to hold political opinions that will live some time, if he could. It is a very awkward thing indeed to adopt a political opinion, and trust to it, and find that it will not live over night. It would be an exceedingly awkward thing to go to bed alone with your political doctrine, trusting and believing in it, thinking it is true, and, waking up in the morning, find it a corpse in your arms. I should be glad, for my part, to hold a political doctrine that would live all through the summer, stand the frost, stand a freeze in the winter, and come out alive and true in the spring. I should like to adopt a political doctrine that would live longer than my dog. I should be glad to hold a political doctrine that would live longer than I shall live, and that my children after me might believe in as true, and say: "This doctrine is true to-day, and it was true fifty years ago when my father adopted it."

Every great political party that has done this country any good has given to it some immortal ideas that have outlived all the members of that party. The old Federal party gave great, permanent ideas to this country, that are still alive. The old Whig party did the same. The old, the very old Democratic

party did the same,-the party of Andrew Jackson, Benton, and Calhoun. But the modern Democratic party has given this country in the last twenty years no idea that has lived to be four years old. I mean an idea, not a passion. The Democratic party has had passions that have lasted longer than that. They have had an immortal appetite for office. That is just as strong to-day as it was twenty years ago. Somebody has called the Democratic party "an organized appetite"; but that is not an idea; it is of the belly, and not of the heart nor of the brain. I say again, they have given to this country no great national idea or doctrine that has lived to be four years old; and if we had in this park, as in a great field, herded together all the ideas that the party has uttered and put forth in the last twenty years, there would not be found a four-year-old in the lot, hardly a three-year-old, hardly a two-year-old. They have adopted a doctrine just to last till election was over; if it did not succeed, they have dropped it to try another; they have tried another until it failed, and then tried another; and it has been a series of mere trials to catch success. Whenever they have started in a campaign, they have looked at all the political barns to see how the tin roosters were pointing, to learn from the political weathercocks which way the wind was likely to blow; and then they have made their doctrines accordingly. This is no slander of the Democratic party. As my friend, Mr. Foster,1 has said, this is true not so much of the body of the party as of the leaders. What a dance they have put the good, sound, quiet, steady-going Democrat through during the last twenty years! They made him denounce our war for a long time; and then, when it was all over, they made him praise it. They made him vote with a party that called our soldiers "Lincoln's hirelings" and "Lincoln's dogs"; and this very day one of the men who did that is parading up and down this State, praising the Democratic party because it has two soldiers at the head of its ticket, and sneering at us because Mr. Foster was not a soldier in the field.

That party has taken both sides of every great question in this country for the last twenty years. They are in favor of the war after it is over. They are in favor of hard money,— or they will be next year, after it is an accomplished fact. They

1 Hon. Charles Foster, in 1879 the Republican candidate for Governor of Ohio.