The Supreme Court

Those goldites who seek to make political capital out of the criticism by the democratie platform of the decisión of the supreme court of the United States which, by reversing the established prect dents of that court for a hundred years, deprived the federal governmeut of the revenue which the income tax would have turned into the treasury, should study the precedents established by the republican party iii dealing with that tribunal, lf the utterance of the Chicago platform is incendiary, read the declaration of the republican platform of 1860 upon the Dred Scott decisión. A republican congress reduced thenumberof judges upon the bench to preveut Andrew Johnson from appointing the successors of those retired and again inereased the number in the next term to give a republican president a chanee to appoint six of those judges. This is the republican record upoii.the supreme court. Let uë see what oft'ense ;tbe democracy gave at Chicago. "We declare that it is the duty of congress to use all of the constitutional power which remains after that decisión, or which may come by its reVársal by the court as it may hereafter be constituted, so that the burder of taxation may be equally and impartially laid, to the end that wealth may bear its due proportions of the expense of the government." Is there any suggestion in that utter#nce of lawlessness or ijpf the us.iirpation of the powers of the court V Js there any intimation of aresistance to regularly organized authority? When we consider that when the supreme court first passed upon the constitutionality of the income tax there were four for and four against sustaining the law, and when the ninth member of that court, Justice Jackson of Tennesee, was able to return to his duties and the question was again raised, Justice Shiras, who had upon the former occasion voted to sustaiu the law changed hls vote, thus making a majority of one against it, can criticism of that decisión be such a serious offense against the peace and tranquillity of the nation? The supreme court is but the creature of the constitution and no branch of government created by that instrument is vested with an authority which the sovereign power of the people whose compact of government it is, cannot and without violatiug the terms of that compact, revise or rescind at will. Tfaere has been no proposal on the part of the democratie party to reach a settlement of the iueome tax question other than by constitutional measures and certainly a measure designed to compel the wealih of the country to share its just proportion of the burdens of goverument will not be condemned as revolutionay by thinking people who have the weliare of the country rather than the fcuccess of a political party, at heart.