frage is one which is likely
to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the
Nation are excluded from its privileges in any State. It seems to
me very desirable that this question should be settled now, and I
entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the
ratification of the fifteenth amendment to the constitution."

During the canvass which resulted in the election of the late
Democratic legislature the Republicans were charged with having
used $800,000, raised for the relief of soldiers' families, to pay
the State debt, and this charge was insisted upon, notwithstanding
a majority of the Democratic members had supported the measure. The
idea was everywhere held out that if the Democratic party were
successful this money would be restored to the relief fund and
expended for the benefit of the soldiers. The failure to redeem
this pledge is aggravated by the fact that the legislature, by a
strictly party vote in the Senate, refused to provide for the
support of soldiers' destitute orphans at homes to be established
without expense to the State by the voluntary contributions of
patriotic and charitable people.

But of all the pledges upon which the Democratic party obtained
power in the last legislature, the most important, and those in
regard to which the just expectations of the people have been most
signally disappointed, are their pledges in relation to financial
affairs--to expenditure, to debt, and to taxation. Upon this
subject the people are compelled to feel a very deep interest. The
flush times of the war have been followed by a financial reaction,
and for the last three or four years the country has been on the
verge of a financial crisis. The burdens of taxation bear heavily
upon labor and upon capital. The Democratic party, profuse alike of
accusations against their adversaries, and of promises of
retrenchment and reform, were clothed with power to deal with the
heaviest part of these burdens, viz: with the expenditures, debts,
assessments, and taxes which are authorized by State legislation.
The results of their two years of power are now before the people.
They are contained in the 65th and 66th volumes of the Laws of
Ohio. Let any Republican diligently study these volumes, and he
will fully com