Under a long period of Democratic rule and policy, our merchant marine was fast overtaking and on the point of outstripping that of Great Britain. Under twenty years of Republican rule and policy, our commerce has been left to British bottoms, and the American flag has almost been swept off the high seas. Instead of the Republican party’s British policy, we demand for the people of the United States an American policy. Under Democratic rule and policy, our merchants and sailors, flying the Stars and Stripes in every port, successfully searched out a market for the various products of American industry; under a quarter of a century of Republican rule and policy, despite our manifest advantages over all other nations, in high paid labor, favorable climates, and teeming soils; despite freedom of trade among all these United States; despite their population by the foremost races of men, and an annual immigration of the young, thrifty, and adventurous of all nations; despite our freedom here from the inherited burdens of life and industry in Old World monarchies, their costly war navies, their vast tax-consuming, non-producing standing armies; despite twenty years of peace—that Republican rule and policy have managed to surrender to Great Britain, along with our commerce, the control of the markets of the world. Instead of the Republican party’s British policy, we demand, in behalf of the American Democracy, an American policy. Instead of the Republican party’s discredited scheme and false pretence of friendship for American labor, expressed by imposing taxes, we demand, in behalf of the Democracy, freedom for American labor by reducing taxes, to the end that these United States may compete with unhindered powers for the primacy among nations in all the arts of peace and fruits of liberty. With profound regret we have been apprised by the venerable statesman, through whose person was struck that blow at the vital principles of republics, acquiescence in the will of the majority, that he cannot permit us again to place in his hands the leadership of the Democratic hosts, for the reason that the achievement of reform in the administration of the Federal Government is an undertaking now too heavy for his age and failing strength. Rejoicing that his life has been prolonged until the general judgment of our fellow-countrymen is united in the wish that that wrong were righted in his person, for the Democracy of the United States we offer to him, in his withdrawal from public cares, not only our respectful sympathy and esteem, but also that best of homage of freemen—the pledge of our devotion to the principles and the cause now inseparable in the history of this Republic from the labors and the name of Samuel J. Tilden.