An Open Confession

The influences of a retired judge still resonates in the House of Representatives as the Democrats and Republicans still struggle to get along.

Hon. Thomas B. Reed again wields the gavel in the House of Representatives.
His retirement from the position was sufficiently long to enable his political antagonists to learn thoroughly the lessons which he assigned them in the fifty-first Congress.
Recitations are now in order and it is hardly probable that the experience of four years ago will be repeated.
The Republican majority will be careful as to what it does not do. The responsibility of the management of the government rests as yet with the Democratic Party. That this view is correct is attested by a most interesting, not to say amusing editorial which appeared in the Richmond, Va., State of Nov. 30.
It says:

If there ever was a time for the display of patriotism on the part of Congressmen it is now. The country has just passed through a terrible ordeal, and the panic which would have come in any event has been made worse by the attitude of the last Congress towards the financial question and by the strain of the national government to protect its credit.

Now this terrible ordeal to which it refers is four years of Democratic Congress and the last Congress which it declares made the situation worse of the same political persuasion.
The State waxes even more emphatic when it says:

We do not pretend to defend the action of the last Democratic Congress. We condemned it at the time, and we condemn it now. But that is past. The question now is, will the Republican Congress do better?
It has a great opportunity, Republicans have claimed that the Democrats have made a great muss of things. They have abused the President for issuing bonds, and they have declared that the policy of the Democratic party has nearly bankrupted the government. The Republicans now have a chance to mend matters, and if they will discharge their duties in the fear of God and in the interest of their country rather than in the interest of partisan politics they will d much to remedy existing evils and to help business.

The above is a most pathetic appeal to the Republicans to help them out. But it continues its pleadings in the following strain:

We frequently hear it said that the present Congress can do nothing because the House is Republican, the control of the Senate in doubt and the President is a Democrat. It is hard to say what the Senate will do, or what the House will do, for that matter, but if the two branches of Congress will only pass such measure as will give the country prosperity and give the government relief, there is no danger that Mr. Cleveland will stand in the way of their becoming laws.

It is an open question as to whether or not a Republican Congress will consider it its duty to help their political antagonists out of the condition in which it finds itself; and place it upon a platform where it can declare twelve months hence that the dawn of prosperity is due to its wise action.
The State may be allright, but there are thousands of Democratic journals silent upon the proposition offered that are waiting for the opportunity to take a partisan advantage of any patriotic effort which the Republicans might take.

“An Open Confession,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed June 17, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1504.