LIII.

GOVERNOR TILDEN'S LETTER ACCEPTING THE NOMINATION OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

ALBANY, July 31, 1876.

GENTLEMEN,- When I had the honor to receive a personal delivery of your letter on behalf of the Democratic National Convention, held on the 28th of June at St. Louis, advising me of my nomination as the candidate of the constituency represented by that body for the office of President of the United States, I answered that, at my earliest convenience, and in conformity with usage, I would prepare and transmit to you a formal acceptance. I now avail myself of the first interval in unavoidable occupations to fulfil that engagement.

The Convention, before making its nominations, adopted a Declaration of Principles which, as a whole, seems to me a wise exposition of the necessities of our country and of the reforms needed to bring back the government to its true functions, to restore purity of administration, and to renew the prosperity of the people. But some of these reforms are so urgent that they claim more than a passing approval.

The necessity of a reform "in the scale of public expense -Federal, State, and municipal" and "in the Reform in public modes of Federal taxation" justifies all the expense.

prominence given to it in the declaration of the St. Louis Convention.

The present depression in all the business and industries of the people, which is depriving labor of its employment and carrying want into so many homes, has its principal cause in excessive governmental consumption. Under the illusions of a specious prosperity engendered by the false policies of the Federal Government, a waste of capital has been going on ever since the peace of 1865 which could only end in universal disaster. The Federal taxes of the last eleven years reach the gigantic sum of $4,500,000,000. Local taxation has amounted to two thirds as much more. The vast aggregate is not less than $7,500,000,000. This enormous taxation followed a civil conflict that had greatly impaired our aggregate wealth and had made a prompt reduction of expenses indispensable. It was aggravated by most unscientific and ill-adjusted methods of taxation, that increased the sacrifices of the people far beyond the receipts of the Treasury. It was aggravated, moreover, by a financial policy which tended to diminish the energy, skill, and economy of production and the frugality of private consumption, and induced miscalculation in business and unremunerative use of capital and labor.

Even in prosperous times the daily wants of industrious. communities press closely upon their daily earnings. The margin of possible national savings is at best a small percentage of national earnings. Yet now for these eleven years governmental consumption has been a larger portion of the national earnings than the whole people can possibly save, even in prosperous times, for all new investments. The consequences of these errors are now a present public calamity. But they were never doubtful, never invisible. They were necessary and inevitable, and were foreseen and depicted when the waves of that fictitious prosperity ran highest. In a speech made by me on the 24th of September, 1868, it was said of these taxes:

"They bear heavily upon every man's income, upon every industry and every business in the country; and year by year they are destined to press still more heavily, unless we arrest the system that

gives rise to them. It was comparatively easy, when values were doubling under repeated issues of legal-tender paper money, to pay out of the froth of our growing and apparent wealth these taxes; but when values recede and sink toward their natural scale, the tax-gatherer takes from us not only our income, not only our profits, but also a portion of our capital. . . . I do not wish to exaggerate or alarm; I simply say that we cannot afford the costly and ruinous policy of the Radical majority of Congress. We cannot afford that policy toward the South. We cannot afford the magnificent and oppressive centralism into which our government is being converted. We cannot afford the present magnificent scale of taxation.”

To the Secretary of the Treasury I said, early in 1865:

"There is no royal road for a government more than for an individual or a corporation. What you want to do now is to cut down your expenses and live within your income. I would give all the legerdemain of finance and financiering-I would give the whole of it for the old, homely maxim, 'Live within your income.""

This reform will be resisted at every step; but it must be pressed persistently. We see to-day the immediate representatives of the people in one branch of Congress, while struggling to reduce expenditures, compelled to confront the menace of the Senate and the Executive that unless the objectionable appropriations be consented to, the operations of the Government thereunder shall suffer detriment or cease. In my judgment an amendment of the Constitution ought to be devised separating into distinct bills the appropriations for the various departments of the public service, and excluding from each bill all appropriations for other objects and all independent legislation. In that way alone can the revisory power of each of the two Houses and of the Executive be preserved and exempted from the moral duress which often compels assent to objectionable appropriations, rather than stop the wheels of the Government.

An accessory cause enhancing the distress in business is to be found in the systematic and insupportable misgovernment imposed on the States of the South. Besides the ordinary

have grown up. And perhaps in what we have witnessed there may be an augury in respect to what we may witness in the election about to take place throughout our country; at least, let us hope so and believe so.

I am not without experience of the difficulty, of the labor of effecting administrative reform when it requires a revolution in policies and in measures long established in government. If I were to judge by the year and a half during which I have been in the State government, I should say that the routine duties of the trust I have had imposed upon me are a small burden compared with that created by the attempt to change the practice of the government of which I have been the executive head. Especially is this so where the reform is to be worked out with more or less of co-operation of public officers who either have been tainted with the evils to be redressed, or who have been incapacitated by the habit of tolerating the wrongs to be corrected, and to which they have been consenting witnesses. I therefore, if your choice should be ratified by the people at the election, should enter upon the great duties which would be assigned to me, not as a holiday recreation, but very much in that spirit of consecration in which a soldier enters battle.

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But let us believe, as I do believe, that we now see the dawn of a better day for our country, that difficult as is the work to which the Democratic party, with many allies and former members of other parties, has addressed itself — the Republic is surely to be renovated, and that it is to live in all the future, to be transmitted to succeeding generations as Jefferson contributed to form it in his day, and as it has been ever since, until a recent period, a blessing to the whole people and a hope to all mankind.

Gentlemen, I thank you for the very kind terms in which you have made your communication, and I extend to you, collectively and individually, a cordial greeting.

LIII.

GOVERNOR TILDEN'S

LETTER ACCEPTING

THE

NOMINATION OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

ALBANY, July 31, 1876.

GENTLEMEN,- When I had the honor to receive a personal delivery of your letter on behalf of the Democratic National Convention, held on the 28th of June at St. Louis, advising me of my nomination as the candidate of the constituency represented by that body for the office of President of the United States, I answered that, at my earliest convenience, and in conformity with usage, I would prepare and transmit to you. a formal acceptance. I now avail myself of the first interval in unavoidable occupations to fulfil that engagement.

The Convention, before making its nominations, adopted a Declaration of Principles which, as a whole, seems to me a wise exposition of the necessities of our country and of the reforms needed to bring back the government to its true functions, to restore purity of administration, and to renew the prosperity of the people. But some of these reforms are so urgent that they claim more than a passing approval.

The necessity of a reform "in the scale of public expense -Federal, State, and municipal" and "in the Reform in public

modes of Federal taxation " justifies all the expense. prominence given to it in the declaration of the St. Louis Convention.