responsibility of the duty I have undertaken. The people now demand a change in the management of Federal affairs; and if this Convention will give them half an opportunity they will execute that purpose in the election of a President in the coming fall.

I believe the nominee of this Convention will soon become the chosen President of the United States. [Cheers.] He will be the first inaugurated President for twenty-four years. [Cheers.] He will come in burdened with all the duties that usually belong to the high office, and in addition such duties and delicate responsibilities as belong to the transfer of public affairs from the representatives of one party to the representatives of another, after long control by the latter.

May I ask your attention while I briefly refer to some of the labor and responsibilities that will require courage, talent and strength on the part of the next President of the United States? The Constitution imposes upon the President the duty of making such recommendations to Congress of such measures as he shall deem important and necessary. How delicate and important that duty becomes! The President is clothed with this authority by the Constitution, the Constitution imposing it upon him. Congress will heed his recommendation with great care. When Congress convened last December, revenues were annually accumulating in excess of the demand of an economical government, at the rate of over $50,000,000 a year. That, too, under a revenue system that had been adjusted within one year by the Republican party. When the accumulated gold overflows the vaults of the treasury and tempts extravagant, wasteful and sometimes corrupt legislation, who can question that revenue reform is the first duty of a successful party? [Cheers.] And if a Democratic House had been received by a President in harmony with it, recommending a well-considered system of revenue reform, eliminating vices that nestle

in existing laws, and reducing very largely the amount of the revenue, does any man doubt that now there would have been a very great relief from the burden of excessive taxation, and that we would have a system of revenue resting upon justice and fair play?

Foremost among the duties and obligations which this great Convention should admonish its nominee to represent, is that the laws be executed and that the expenditures be greatly reduced. Shall the vast standing army of one hundred and twenty regiments continue under Democratic rule? [Cries of "no."] At the close of the war I believe 60,000 were found sufficient to execute the civil service. The official register, as a matter of course, was somewhat increased, and it should not excite our special wonder; but when from 60,000 in the course of twenty years it shall advance to 120,000, it bids the Democracy pause. The supernumeraries must be dismissed, unnecessary employments discontinued. And in this connection may I not say that the people whom you represent will stand like a stone wall beside the next President in his endeavor to promote economy and general reform? Eight years ago our party declared at St. Louis that reform is necessary in the civil service, and it demanded a change of system, a change of administration, a change of party, that we might have a change of measures and of men. [Applause.] The experience of every year since has confirmed that declaration and strengthened the demands. It is but two weeks ago that a Secretary, standing upon the witness stand in the presence of a Senate committee to hear testimony to impeach one of the Bureaus in his own Department-it was in the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery-said that the false vouchers, he supposed, did not exceed $63,000. In former times, when the sensibilities of the people became offended by official corruption, they themselves understood the work of reform. I dare say many I dare say many of you bear

it in memory that an entire Administration once went down, because of the defalcation or embezzlement of $62,000. That was but forty years ago, and that was the only case that occurred attracting attention during that Administration. Yet, so fearful was the punishment by the people, that the party went from power for the time being. Who expects that a party long in power, with all the emoluments of public position received and enjoyed by its followers and retainers, can reform itself? The recent case to which I have referred is very instructive. In that testimony the Secretary said that a year ago he had received a letter informing him of the misconduct of one of his employes, and that very recently he had been told of two others engaged in the nefarious transactions, but he said to the committee that so earnest was the pressure, especially by members of Congress, for a reappointment of the head of the Bureau, that he could not believe it possible that his Bureau was in the condition in which he found it at last. The offenses against the public service are numerous, many of them flagrant. They must be pursued to their hiding places. They must be brought forth and exposed and punished, and the agents that the President will employ-I mean the new President that you are to nominate here-the agents that he shall employ must have no one to shield and nothing to conceal. Let fidelity and competency once more on the part of employes, and justice and fair play so far as the people of the country are concerned, be observed, and reforms will follow. I hope never again to see the cruel and remorseless proscription for political opinions which has disgraced recent Administrations.

But bad as the civil service is, I know that there are men of tried fidelity in it. I know that there are men of ability in the present service, and I would not ask that they should be driven from office; but none but such ought to be continued. In the language of a writer, when

we come to define the rights of the outs and those that are in, let it be understood that none but the fittest shall survive. [Applause.]

Now, Mr. President, I hope the new Administration will hold itself instructed by the sentiment of 1876 [cheers] in opposition to centralization, to that dangerous spirit of encroachment which tends to consolidate in one, and thus create, whatever the form of government, a despotism.

I have but one other sentiment to refer to before I shall

call your attention to the claims which I propose to suggest for the man that I will nominate, and in respect to this sentiment no one is responsible but myself. Nations never devise a more rational umpire of difference than force. Much blood and treasure always flow before international controversies can be settled. Controversies will arise-they are inevitable-but the civilization of this age demands that they be referred to the disinterested States for settlement by friendly arbitration. The intervening ocean protects our young Republic from the menace of European arms. It will be a beautiful spectacle when this Republic, so strong and so secure, shall lead the nations in a movement for permanent peace and the relief of the people everywhere from the maintenance of standing armies and ships of war. The best act of General Grant's administration was the settling by arbitra tion of the controversies touching the Alabama. That settlement stands in bright, glorious contrast in all history with the use that he himself made of our own army when he beleaguered the Capital that men might have office to which they were never elected. [Loud applause.]

Mr. President and Gentlemen: I have to suggest for your consideration a citizen of the State of Indiana, the Hon. Joseph E. McDonald. [Loud and long-continued applause.] I thank you for this reception you have given to his name. Born in an adjoining State, Indiana became his home when but a boy. He learned a trade, and

that made him self-dependent and very respectable [applause], and after that he pursued his studies with such opportunities as he had, and finally prepared himself for the great profession of law; and from the time that he took his stand in the court house of his county until the present time, when he stands, it may be, in the Supreme Court of the United States, he has been the peer of the best of that profession in the West. [Loud applause.] First, he was solicited by the district in which he lived to prosecute the pleas of the State; afterward. chosen by the State to represent her as the Attorney General; next-not next to that, but before that-he went from his own district, in which he was raised from boyhood, to the Congress of the United States, and after ward the people of the whole State sent him as a Sena tor to Washington. Faithfully, diligently, ably, for six years he represented Indiana in the Senate. He was welcomed by the ablest of the Senators as their peer. Mr. McDonald has been a student of the learning that has made the Democracy of the United States what it is today. [Loud applause.] He is familiar with the writings of the fathers, and his opinions are based upon the sentiments that came to him from their pages. He is of clear perception, of strong judgment, of earnest convictions, fair minded and just. If you shall honor him with your nomination, no man will have occasion to find fault with the candid and frank manner of his reception when he may go to the White House.

Gentlemen of the Convention, I do not speak for McDonald alone. I do not speak for myself alone. I do not speak for those thirty gentlemen who directed me to stand here and speak for them. I speak for a mighty State. [Loud and long continued applause.] But ten days ago a Democracy that never steps backward, a Democracy that meets the contest when and where it may [applause], instructed those thirty gentlemen and myself