Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1881 — Illustrated Blackguardism. [ARTICLE]

Illustrated Blackguardism.

Caricature has always been one of the sharpest weapons of political warfare. Travesty, burlesque, and all the changes of the farcical have been used pitilessly and mercilessly from time immemorial both in the interest of political parties and political blackguards. When party lines could not be broken by the heavy guns of argument or the fierce musketry fire of attack in front, the caricaturist has been sent, like a cavalry rider to the rear, or like a spy in the garb of a buffoon, into the enemy’s camp. Sometimes the work of men like Leech and Nastlias been more effective than argument, and has been employed in as legitimate a way. But the sense of irresponsibility, the license given to purely personal spites and prejudices, and the feeling of reckless jollity that at times influence the artist, make the work of even the best caricaturists uneven. The temptation of the ordinary scandalmonger to go to extremes is limited by the thought that he will be held responsible for every word he utters. But the caricaturist labors under no such restraint. He works in the dark or behind a veil, with all the materials at hand to besmirch and degiade. If he be a small man his powers of ridicule and his sense of humor are given free rein on the downward scale. He knows little about men, less about underlying principles, but, guided by superficial ob servation and popular clamor, he puts his own littleness or meanness into his conceits, and is satisfied if the blackguards and unscrupulous applaud. There is no heart in burlesque, and no conscience in travesty. Unbounded license is the rule, and things held most sacred are turned into ridicule without compunction. The lowest instincts and the vilest impulses find expression in the name of burlesque, and the people are expected to forget the rankness of the offense against decency in their laughs over absurdities. The people have excused so many offenses of this kind that the blackguards of caricature have found encouragement for their most disreputable work. Many foreign artists, without a spark of patriotism, without any sense of loyalty to America or Americans, without any respect for American ideas, with a contempt and hatred even for the country and its people, are employed on our illustrated papers. It is the delight of these fellows to indulge in such vile conceits as will give Americans most annoyance and most pain, and little wonder is it that journals which make a specialty of such work have gone down by dozens, or have been sustained at great outlay of money. Little wonder is it that under such circunstances the art that Nast made respectable has degenerated into a trade little above that of the blackguard. —Chicago Inter-Ocean.