Answer. The party, as a party, will have nothing to do with these questions. These matters are local. Whether the Republicans are successful will depend more upon the country's prosperity. If things should be generally in pretty good shape in 1884, the people will allow the party to remain in power. Changes of administration depend a great deal on the feeling of the country. If crops are bad and money is tight, the people blame the administration, whether it is responsible or not. If a ship going down the river strikes a snag, or encounters a storm, a cry goes up against the captain. It may not have been his fault, but he is blamed, all the same, and the passengers at once clamor for another captain. So it is in politics.
If nothing interferes between this and 1884, the Republican party will continue. Otherwise it will be otherwise. But the principle of prosperity as applied to administrative change is strong. If the panic of 1873 had occurred in 1876 there would have been no occasion for a commission to sit on Tilden. If it had struck us in 1880, Hancock would have been elected. Neither result would have its occasion in the superiority of the Democratic party, but in the belief that the Republican party was in some vague way blamable for the condition of things, and there should be a change. The Republican party is not as strong as it used to be. The old leaders have dropped out and no persons have yet taken their places. Blaine has dropped out, and is now writing a book. Conkling dropped out and is now practicing law, and so I might go on enumerating leaders who have severed their connection with the party and are no longer identified with it.
Question. What is your opinion regarding the Republican nomination for President?
Answer. My belief is that the Republicans will have to nominate some man who has not been conspicuous in any faction, and upon whom all can unite. As a consequence he must be a new man. The Democrats must do the same. They must nominate a new man. The old ones have been defeated so often that they start handicapped with their own histories, and failure in the past is very poor raw material out of which to manufacture faith for the future. My own judgment is that for the Democrats, McDonald is as strong a man as they can get. He is a man of most excellent sense and would be regarded as a safe man. Tilden? He is dead, and he occupies no stronger place in the general heart than a graven image. With no magnetism, he has nothing save his smartness to recommend him.
Question. What are your views, generally expressed, on the tariff?
Answer. There are a great many Democrats for protection and a great many for so-called free trade. I think the large majority of American people favor a reasonable tariff for raising our revenue and protecting our manufactures. I do not believe in tariff for revenue only, but for revenue and protection. The Democrats would have carried the country had they combined revenue and incidental protection.
Question. Are they rectifying the error now?
Answer. I believe they are, already. They will do it next fall. If they do not put it in their platform they will embody it in their speeches. I do not regard the tariff as a local, but a national issue, notwithstanding Hancock inclined to the belief that it was the former.
—The Times, Chicago, Illinois, October 13, 1883.