around this it has gathered the protected manufacturer, the pensioned soldier, the licensed monopolist, the privileged corporation, the unchallenged trust—all whom power can daunt, or money can buy, and with these in close and constant phalanx it holds the government against the people. Not a man in all its ranks that is not influenced by prejudice or bought by privilege. What a spectacle, my countrymen! This free Republic in the hands of a party that withdraws sovereignty from the people that its own authority may be made supreme—that fans the smouldering embers of war, and loosing among the people the dogs of privilege and monopoly to hunt, and harrow and rend, that its lines may be made stronger and its ramparts fortified. And now, it is committed to a crime that is without precedent or parallel in the history of any people, and this crime it is obliged by its own necessity as well as by its pledge to commit as soon as it gets the full reins of power. This crime is hidden in the bill known as the service pension bill, which pensions every man who enlisted for sixty days for the Union army. Let us examine this pension list. Twelve years ago it footed $46,000,000. Last year it was $81,000,000. This year it has already run to over $100,000,000. Of this amount Georgia pays about $3,500,000 a year. Think of it. The money that her people have paid, through indirect taxation into the treasury, is given, let us say to Iowa, for that State just equals Georgia in population. Every year $3,500,000 wrung from her pockets and sent into Iowa as pensions for her soldiers. Since 1865, out of her poverty, Georgia has paid $51,000,000 as pensions to Northern soldiers—one-sixth of the value of her whole property. And now it is proposed to enlarge the pension list until it includes every man who enlisted for sixty days. They will not fail. The last Congress passed a pension bill that Commissioner Black—himself a gallant Union general—studied deliberately, and then told the President that if he signed it, it would raise the pension list to $200,000,000, and had it not been for the love of the people that ran in the veins of Grover Cleveland and the courage of Democracy which flamed in his heart, that bill would have been law to-day. A worse bill will be offered. There is a surplus of $120,000,000 in the treasury. While that remains it endangers the protective tariff, behind which the trained captains of the Republican party muster their men. But let the pension list be lifted to $200,000,000 a year. Then the surplus is gone and a deficiency created, and the protective tariff must be not only perpetuated but deepened, and the vigilance of the spies and collectors increased to meet the demands of the government. And back of it all will be mustered the army of a million and a half pensioners, drawing their booty from the Republican party and giving it in turn their purchased allegiance and support.