CHAPTER XIX. Α HISTORY UNDER PRESIDENTS S already stated, the election of General Garfield was secured by the lavish expenditure of money in Indiana and other doubtful States and by the efforts of the Grant wing of the party in the closing weeks of the campaign. When the new President announced his Cabinet, with Mr. Blaine as Secretary of State, it was clear that the peace patched up between the two wings of the party was a precarious one, and the brief remaining period of President Garfield's life was soon embittered by a controversy between himself and Mr. Conkling as to Federal appointments in the State of New York, which led to the resignation of Mr. Conkling from the Senate and a long and bitter contest over the election of his successor in the Legislature of that State. The bullet of Guiteau removed General Garfield and ended his administration before the breach between the two sections of the party became as complete and bitter as it promised to become, and although the administration of President Arthur tended greatly to heal party dissensions and to restore party harmony, this factional schism was not without its influence in throwing the vote of New York against the Little need Republican party in the following campaign. be said of the history of parties during the administration of President Arthur, as there were few subjects of legislation or of public policy upon which party lines were strictly drawn. The existence of large surplus revenues called public attention very forcibly, in the beginning of this administration, to the necessity of revising federal taxes and reforming the tariff system, which was a legacy of the careless and random legislation inevitable during the war and in the years thereafter. The first message, therefore, of President Arthur declared that the time had come when the people may justly demand some relief from their onerous burdens, and urged upon Congress a revision and reduction of tariff taxation. Congress itself attempted no relief, but responded to these recommendations and to the pressure of public opinion by the act of May 5, 1882, establishing a tariff commission to "take into consideration, and to thoroughly investigate, all the various questions relating to the agricultural, commercial, manufacturing, mining and industrial interests of the United States, so far as the same may be necessary to the establishment of a judicious tariff or a revision of the existing tariff on a scale of justice to all." If there be any one blot upon the record of President Author, whose administration it must be conceded was generally a respectable and honorable one so far as he was personally concerned, it will be found in the manner in which he selected the nine members of this this commission-giving to the protected industries of the country a large majority of the commission through men selected by them, or identified with them, while the incomparable mass of taxpayers in the country had no representation in the commission charged with the important duty of revising that system of taxation which the President had already declared an onerous burden upon them. Had President Cleveland in selecting the members of the Inter-State Commerce Commission allowed the great railroad corporations of the country to dictate to him the names he should send in to the Senate, he would have done exactly what President Arthur did in constituting the tariff commission. That commission, framed as it was, was compelled to report to Congress at its session in December, 1882, a scheme of tariff duties in which reduction was professed to be the distinguishing feature, averaging, as it declared, not less than 20, and possibly 25 per cent. The short session of the Forty-seventh Congress was accordingly taken up with the question of tariff revision, resulting in the existing law, known as the act of March 3, 1883, which under the skillful manipulation of the lobbies sent to Washington by the protected industries, aided by their friends and representatives in both Houses of Congress, and finally consummated in the secret recesses of a conference committee, made but a nominal reduction, if any, in tariff taxes, and none whatever in the protective bounties. The elections in the fall of 1882 were a repetition of the great tidal wave victories of 1874, and in the Forty-eighth Congress, which reassembled in December, 1883, the Democratic majority in the House was nearly as large as it had been in the Forty-fourth Congress, and Mr. John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, distinguished as an advocate |