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"Not only is the public debt, which pays nothing to support Government, held mainly in one corner of our country, but the banks, which have a right to make the currency for all the States, are placed and owned in a large degree by the Eastern and Middle States. Not only our debt, but our currency is sectionalized. In the report of the Secretary of the Treasury on this subject, made last session to Congress, it was shown that of the national bank notes then issued, Massachusetts had $52 for every person within her borders; Connecticut, $42; and Rhode Island, $77; while in the great commercial States of the West, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, the proportion is in Ohio only $8 per head; in Illinois, $6; in Michigan, $3; and in Wisconsin, $3 per head of the population. So that whatever profits are made out of bank circulation, by far the largest proportion thereof goes to these three New England States. The number and wealth of the people of the great States thus left with little or no means of getting currency except as borrowed from more favored sections, makes this a glaring evil. As they grow in commerce, wealth, and power, they will demand, with a strong show of reason, that they shall be put upon an equal footing with the Northern section of the Union.'

More than two years ago it was seen that the baser men of the Republican party were getting control of its organization, and that it was no longer under the lead of its ablest minds. Since that time those who cherish any regard for decency, justice, political or personal rights, have been driven from its ranks, or forced to yield in blind obedience to the clamors and passions of the unthinking or unscrupulous. Governor Seymour, in common with all patriotic men, regretted this demoralization of a great party. He then said:

"Let us look at the moral evils which this gospel of hate has brought upon all forms of public action in party, church or literature. I do not speak now of the abuse and untruth uttered against us. We have learned to bear those unmoved, and to go on unswerved in those pathways which we think lead to the right ends. The day of our triumph will be when truth triumphs, and that day will surely come.

I speak of the sad spectacle which we have seen in the discomfiture of those who built up the party of bigotry and hate, and who are now the very victims of the passion they have stirred up, but which they cannot quiet. Each of the men of mind who have led in the revolution which has changed the whole aspect of our country, has tried to check its violence or to direct his course into better channels: and each has been trampled down as ruthlessly as a herd of maddened buffaloes tread out the lives of their leaders if they stop in their speed or swerve from their course. Each of these men of brains, who thought they were guiding events, have had to pick themselves out of the dust into which they were tumbled because they dared to speak out an honest opinion which did not chime with the coarse passions and narrow views of the mass of their party. The rough-hewn, vigorous editor of the Tribune, who, beyond other men, had pushed on the political fight against the South until he may partly claim to have done most of all to kindle the flames of civil war, saw, in his bloody course, that wise statesmanship could save the Union and stop the waste of life and treasure. He made the attempt, and the wild herd behind him trod him down. An eloquent clergyman, who prided himself upon boldness and daring. felt that he owed something to religion as well as to party; he tried to teach men that as our Saviour came to save us while we were in open rebellion to Divine authority, we who prayed each night God's forgiveness of our daily sin, should at least have pity upon our brethren who had laid down their arms; but the bellowing crowds drowned the words of charity, and the frightened divine dare not to-day preach words of love and peace from our Saviour's Sermon on the Mount. The poets and philosophers, whose journal is read by the educated and thinking portion of society, once ventured to say that Congress was corrupt, its legislation destructive to the interests of the country, that its tariff suppressed honest industry, and filled with dishonest gains the pockets of speculators and swindlers; but they never dared to face the threatening crowd. They know that the Southern States are kept out of the Union because, as agricultural States, they would be represented by those who would act for the interest of commerce here, and for the interests of agriculture in the Northwest. There was meaning in Mr. Wendell Phillips's statement in this hall, when he said South Carolina would have representation in Congress when it acted in accord with Massachusetts. Another editor, who trusted in his dexterity to ride upon many animals at once, tried to turn the brutal throng by the bait of an office, and he has been so tossed upon their horns that neither he nor we can tell

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upon what spot he will fall. I might speak of others as well as these, who have learned the humiliating truth that their abilities govern less than the blind rage and stentorian lungs of men they despise in their hearts, and that they only keep their leadership by outrunning in an ignorant race brutal and stupid bigots. While I feel no friendship for these men, and while they think ill of me, I know they are men of ability; and it is a public evil when those most fitted to guide a great party become the mere slaves of the meaner passions of their associates.

"The public safety is endangered when the ablest men of a governing party dare not speak out their honest thoughts or act out their clear convictions. But there are republicans who admit that Congress is too violent; that it is dangerous to leave open the great break in the circle of our national unity, and who see that there is a class of men who make their zeal and fanaticism pay by stealthily and steadily fastening upon the country a system of taxation which will enrich them at the cost of the general welfare.

"I do not say nor believe that the body of the republicans want violence or discord; but the violent of all party govern in the end. A party which is unchecked in its power loses control of its own action. The vigorous, excited minority within its own ranks, by the machinery of organization, governs the larger number, as was done in the last Congress. In every instance those in power have from year to year gone beyond their own purpose, because there has not been enough opposing force to keep them within the bounds which their own sober judgment feels to be right."

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE SPEECH OF THE CONVENTION OF 1867.

WHEN the Democratic Convention of the State of New York was held in 1867, Governor Seymour was called to the Chair as the permanent President. The Convention was, exceedingly enthusiastic, and nominated the ticket headed by Homer J. Nelson, for Secretary of State. Under the principles which were marked out in the speech of Gov. Seymour on that occasion, the party went into the contest, and carried the State by nearly fifty thousand majority.

At the afternoon session of the Convention, Mr. Smith M. Weed, from the Committee on Permanent Organization, reported the name of Gov. Seymour for President, and, amid rounds of cheers, Messrs. Danforth, of Schoharie, and DeWitt, of Ulster, escorted him to the Chair. He spoke as follows:

"Gentlemen of the Convention:

"We are startled by the cry of the leaders of the party holding political power that our country is in great peril. After wading through the bloodshed of civil war that peace which we hailed with joy, and which they told us was to give strength and prosperity to our land, brings new danger to the Republic. We can not, if we would, escape from confronting the problems of the day. Neither safety, honor, nor patriotism will suffer us to stand dumb or inactive in the dark hour of danger. We have put down rebcllion, we

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are now struggling with revolution. The first was sectional; the last is universal. The first sought to divide our country; the last threatens to destroy it.

"At the National Capital we see that the party that placed in power the present Chief Magistrate, now charges him with treason, and many of its leaders have instilled into the public mind the horrible suspicion that he was in league with the murderers who struck down the life that stood between him and the Executive Chair. The world is aghast while it hears so foul an accusation uttered in the halls of the Legislature without rebuke. In the House of Representatives members make against each other charges of judicial murder, robbery, theft, and corruption. A military member alleges his legal associate plotted the death and carried to the gallows an innocent woman for partisan purposes. The accuser is charged in return with the fact of going to the war a poor man and coming back a poor general and a rich man; laden, not with the spoils of victory, but plunder stolen from those placed under his protection. The Congressman who stands up as the accuser of the President is confronted by his own letter, showing his utter rottenness. We are saved from the hateful task of laying bare the frauds and crimes of those who are administering our Government. God's law for punishing the guilty makes them become mutual accusers. In the hate aud rage which ever springs up among criminals all are anxious to turn upon and convict their fellows.

"While the Senate has done less to shock the world and bring our Government into contempt, it has been the forum where principles have been asserted and a policy pursued revolutionary in tendency, and far-reaching in their influences to keep alive disorder and political convulsions. In its blindness it is striking suicidal blows against its own existence. Its members have become the ruling power in our Government. Vested with equal rights of law-making with the popular branch, they can also decide upon all treaties, which, within their scope, rise above the statutes. They control the appointing power; for the vast patronage of Government can only be exercised with their consent. They can, as a judicial body, depose the President or Vice-President, elected by the people, and put one of their own members into the Executive Chair. They hold their places by terms longer than those of any other elective branch of Government, yet they do not in the nature of their organization represent the people in form or fact. They are chosen by Legislatures not by the people. States having, by the census of 1860, less than one-quarter of the population of our country, appoint a majority of its members.