Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/550

516 infants, the older and stronger they grow, the more strenuously the Republican party insists that the high duties must be maintained or even raised. And finally it informs us in this year's platform that “rather than surrender any part of the protective system,” it will wipe out the taxes on tobacco and whisky—taxes of the most rational character, for they are in the truest sense voluntarily paid on things that are not necessaries of life, and one of which, the whisky tax, Thomas Jefferson, not withstanding his hostility to excises, recognized as a tax of sanitary value in a moral as well as physical respect. Would not, but a few years ago, a proposition completely to abolish the whisky tax have encountered the almost unanimous opposition of the Republican party?

But more. It was the custom of the Republican party to pledge itself in its platforms that the government should be administered with strict economy. The platform of this year omits this pledge, and recommends the liberal spending of the public money for a variety of subjects. What this means is easily understood. There is a large surplus in the Treasury. That surplus is constantly increased by a revenue far exceeding the current needs of the government. Such a surplus, constantly growing, is by every sensible man recognized as a public danger. It not only withdraws from business channels the money required for active circulation, but its very existence always breeds jobbery and corruption. Everybody knows that. How get rid of it? Common-sense would say that if our taxes yield too much revenue, let us promptly reduce our taxes, first those which are most irrational and burdensome to the people. But the Republican party tells us—rather than reduce the tariff, rather than surrender any part of the protective system, let ever so much more revenue than we need be raised, and let us spend the money liberally in whatever way we can. In