Take even a broader field. Each one of our forty-five millions of people is choosing what he desires to possess, to consume, to enjoy of the products of foreign climes. Each one is proposing what he shall take from his own labor to pay for what he purchases from abroad. There have been those who have kept awake nights for fear that we should buy everything from abroad and sell nothing, and therefore rapidly become bankrupt.

[Addressing D. A. Wells, President of the Social Science Association, Governor Tilden said: ] I believe you, Mr. President, have been able to save yourself and rescue many others from that apprehension. You have seen that it is not necessary for two or three hundred wise men in the city of Washington to decide and specify what we shall sell and what we shall buy in order to save us from the calamity which would otherwise fall upon us.

Gentlemen, how is it that this great multitude of individual wills and individual tastes, acting separately and independently, find themselves averaged and compensated until everything tends to and everything results in an equilibrium of forces? It is that the Divine Being has impressed upon everything order, method, and law. Even the most divergent, even the most uncertain, even those things in the individual taste which we cannot foresee or calculate upon at all, when we group them in large masses reduce themselves to intelligible forms. Now I undersand that what you propose to do is to apply this same method of investigation to pauperism, to crime, to insanity, and to all those cases where governmental interference or governmental intelligence is deemed to be necessary. I do not doubt, if you will study these subjects with attention, diligence, and patience, that you will prove great benefactors, not only of this community, but also of the whole country. I cannot conclude, however, without one word of warning, and that is this.

The emotional and sympathetic mind, seeking out relief for evil distinctly seen and strongly felt, looking perhaps upon a specific evil with a view somewhat out of proportion to its

relation to all the interests of society, and going to the public treasury for a fund from which to gratify its humane and charitable instincts, and not restrained by any consideration limiting its disposition or its power, no doubt tends sometimes to extravagance in the public charities. I had occasion last year and the year before to object to the magnificence of the public buildings being erected in this State for these purposes; and the caution I wish to suggest to you to-day is this, that while all the Heaven-born, God-given sentiments of humanity may fairly have their scope in operating upon your minds and your hearts to impel you to relieve evils of this character which exist among us, you want, if possible, to unite in your action, prudence, caution, frugality, and the economy of the thorough man of business. In the interest of your charities you should see that the funds consecrated to them be not exhausted or consumed without the greatest possible results being derived therefrom; in the interest of society you should see that the burdens for these objects do not become intolerable. While we exercise every sentiment of humanity, — while we do all in our power to relieve misfortune, to overcome evils, to apply discipline, and to enforce reformation, at the same time we must bear in mind that the industrious millions who keep out of the poorhouses and penitentiaries are also entitled to the consideration and the care of the Government. We must see to it that we do not foster, as in a hotbed, the very evils which we seek to remove; we must see to it that our methods are well devised, are prudent, and are effective. And if, as has sometimes been said in applying the method belonging to the study of the physical sciences to social problems, -if, as has been said, that method in its application to the physical sciences has tended to nurture too much reliance on human intellect, and to draw us away from a natural dependence on what is higher and better, when we come to apply this method to social life, when we come to contemplate minutely, as with a microscope, the wrongs, the frailties, and the weaknesses of humanity, we should rectify that tendency, and

permit our minds to be led through these laws up to the great Source from which all laws are derived. Gentlemen of the Conference, for and on behalf of the people of the State of New York, in your grand, noble, and benevolent work, I bid you God speed.

LV.

WAR CLAIMS AND THE REBEL DEBT.

To the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt.

NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 1876.

SIR, I have received your letter informing me that Republicans high in authority are publicly representing that "the South desire, not without hope," to obtain payment for losses by the late war, and to have " provision made for the rebel debt and for the losses of slaves." As the payment of such losses and claims was not deemed important enough to deserve the notice of either Convention at the time it was held, you also ask me to state my views in regard to their recognition by the Government. Though disposed myself to abide by the issue as made up already, I have no hesitation to comply with your request.

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution expressly provides as follows,

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"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void."

This amendment has been repeatedly approved and agreed to by Democratic State conventions of the South.

unanimously adopted as a part of the platform of the Democratic National Convention at St. Louis on the 28th of June, and was declared by that platform to be "universally accepted as a final settlement of the controversies that engendered civil war."

My own position on this subject had been previously declared on many occasions, and particularly in my first Annual Message of Jan. 5, 1875. In that document I stated that the Southern people were bound by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Constitutional Amendments; that they had "joined at national conventions in the nomination of candidates and in the declaration of principles and purposes which form an authentic acceptance of the results of the war embodied in the last three amendments to the organic law of the Federal Union, and that they had, by the suffrages of all their voters at the last national election, completed the proof that now they only seek to share with us and to maintain the common rights of American local self-government in a fraternal union, under the old flag, with one Constitution and one destiny.'

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I declared at the same time that the questions settled by the war are never to be reopened. "The adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution closed one great era in our politics. It marked the end forever of the system of human slavery and of the struggles that grew out of that system. These amendments have been conclusively adopted, and they have been accepted. in good faith by all political organizations and the people of all sections. They close the chapter; they are and must be final; all parties hereafter must accept and stand upon them; and henceforth our politics are to turn upon questions of the present and the future, and not upon those of the settled and final past."

Should I be elected President, the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment will, so far as depends on me, be maintained, executed, and enforced in perfect and absolute good faith.