that the machinery of administration may become more and more a mere instrument of ring-rule, a tool to manufacture majorities and to organize plunder; and that, in the hollow shell of republican forms, the Government will become the football of rapacious and despotic factions.
With such opportunities and such dangers before us, it is our duty to examine the problems to be solved with candor and impartiality. It will be impossible for me to discuss in the narrow compass of a single speech all questions of importance. I am obliged to confine myself to-night to those which are at this hour the most prominent, leaving others to future occasions. It is one of the great misfortunes of our situation that we can scarcely attempt to engage the attention of the people in other subjects of legislation without being disturbed again and again by what may be called the Southern problem, reinflaming party spirit and distracting the popular mind. When the project of annexing Santo Domingo was before the Senate, I asked, in the course of my argument opposing it: “Have we not enough with one South as an element of disturbance? Do you want to purchase another one?” No prudent man will deny to-day that that question was very pertinent.
Last week the whole country was ablaze with excitement over the revolution in Louisiana. My opinion on the Louisiana case I expressed when it first came up in the Senate, in February of last year. That opinion was based upon a conscientious and candid study of the very elaborate report of our investigating committee. It was this: That the Kellogg government in that State had been set up by an act of gross and indefensible usurpation on the part of a United States District Judge, aided by United States troops, without the least evidence of an election by the people; that all the evidence there was of an election by the people, in the shape of returns, was
