es
and divisions should be laid aside; that new ideas and new measures
required attention; and they were particularly emphatic and earnest
in declaring that the enormous burdens of debt and taxation under
which the people were struggling made retrenchment and economy the
supreme duty of the hour.

These were their promises, and the manner in which they were kept
is now before the people for their judgment. Disregarding the
well-known and solemnly-expressed will of Ohio, they began the
business of their first session by passing fruitless resolutions to
rescind the ratification of the 14th amendment to the constitution
of the United States.

They placed on the statute book visible admixture bills, to deprive
citizens of the right of suffrage--a constitutional right long
enjoyed and perfectly well settled by repeated decisions of the
highest court having jurisdiction of the question.

They repealed the law allowing, after the usual residence, the
disabled veterans of the Union army to vote in the township in
which the National Soldiers' Home is situated; and enacted a law
designed to deprive of the right of suffrage a large number of
young men engaged in acquiring an education at "any school,
seminary, academy, college, university, or other institution of
learning." To prevent citizens who were deprived of their
constitutional rights by these acts from obtaining prompt relief in
the Supreme Court, they passed a law prohibiting that court from
taking up causes on its docket according to its own judgment of
what was demanded by public justice, in any case "except where the
person seeking relief had been convicted of murder in the first
degree, or of a crime the punishment of which was confinement in
the penitentiary."

I believe it is the general judgment of the people of Ohio that the
passage of these measures, unconstitutional as some of them are,
and unjust as they all are, was mainly due to the fact that the
classes of citizens disfranchised by them do not commonly vote with
the Democratic party. The Republican party condemns all such
legislation, and demands its repeal.

On the important subject of suffrage, General Grant, in his
inaugural message, expresses the convictions of the Republican
party. He says: "The question of suf