Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1882 — OBITUARY. [ARTICLE]

OBITUARY.

(From the Chicago Times.] 1 Died, Nov. 7,1882, of an overdose of party. Pres dent, the llepublicm party, aged 26 years. The deceased entered into this life in the year 1856. It (being of the neuter gender) was the offspring of the union of Political. Motive and Public Consc'ence. Like Hercules, it came into the world with a gi and'ftiisbion—namely, to strangle the polydephalowi dragon, Slavery, and its slimy brood, Stateism, Nullification, Secession, Bourbonisip, etc, composing f a, family leal led the Dc’inccratic party.' Like *otit army at Bull Run, it was defeated in its first » contest with the public enemy, led- Iry. a chieftain popularly styled “ Old Buck.” But, four .years ftder ,• 41ie» young Hercules had attained to *such. strength and vigor that the political dragon was driven to the wall. Btill, the dragon refused to surrender. Musall the members of its- silnrian family, excepting softie of tfttffae in the northern parts of the land, who enrolled themselves under the national b inner, of which the Deliverer had gained possession, the Detroyer unfurled the Hag of Secession and proclaimed the holy war of- the Rebellion. How the youthful Deliverer triumphed in that war, abolislied Slavery, strangled Secession and Nullification, ban-, ished Stateism, broke the back of Bohl* bonism and established National Supremacy on an immovable foumlation, is a familiar history which no power of this world can unwrite. With the consummation of the socalled “reconstruction" of the national order, the political mission of the deceased was But such was the irresistible force with which it had moved on to the fulfillment that it* was not easy at that point to aWest or control th® momentum. Two great reasons appeared for the continuance cfl its organized activities. One, and-th* stronger reason, was that the Democrat diwon? though dismembered -and mutilated and reduced to a miserable rump, still exhiftitccT life, iftid refused to bury it* putrefying carcass out of sight. Iftithat putrid reminiscence had. crawled iptp its proper holo and given up the jniost* upbn the suppression of its rGWnion; fhetriurnphant party winch had delivered the land from its hateful jjyould also hftve broken up and disappeared l in 1872, and perhaps- earlier.' It was •mainly public, fear of .thmjjld Bourbon dragon, which pefsrstfcd’mSquatting in its corner and whoaing ita unj>le.is<nt fangs, that kept party in existence. * n . j . The other cause the prolongation of its organic life, after the fulfilment of its political mission *an appetite for the “spoils of officO?’ Among its most active and conspicuous men were many who had beetptraiued in the political school of Marcy and Jackson 1 ;' men who, like “the Veter (th ” Thurlow Weed, “believed in the spoils systeAi,” and regarded parties; as merely organized election machines to be used by" professional-politicians as appliances for getting the offifees. To ; these were speedily added innumerable others who became easy converts to that view, Ab that hardly had the deceased party accomplished its political' mission than the professional politician began tb employ its organisation as aibqlection machine for office-getting, an£ to exclude political considerations as matters interfering with its Usefiilfieis to them ae a machine. , ‘- ir " i ?!<* •* - ' imp

But this reduction of party to the character of a mere election machine inbttulated it with the loathsome and fatal disease known as the spoils distemper, which has its genesis in the party President. Strong symptoms of the malady began to appear in Grant’s reign; wherefore they were called Grantism. They did not differ, however, from the symptoms of the same malady under other party Presidents. What was called Grantism, and so exasperated the country against the Pres- ■ ident that a large number of the provinces wlijch supported his candidacy in 1861? turned ’against, him in 1872, was, reduced to its simplest expression, the employment of-tlie appointing power as ameaffrf of paying his political debts, bribing party support, and rewarding the questionable, characters whom a Missouri Senator of the President’s own Dui’ty described as “ Grant’s cursed old bar-room cronies." The dose of party President which Grant gave it in his firsteterm was so strong that it reduced the party nigh unto death in 1872, and probably it would have kicked the bucket then if the offensive circa is ol the Democrat dragon had no been In gged in at Cincinnati and Baltimore to frighten the country into keeping G rant four yeats longer. Tne “party did not recover from the spoils disease. Grant would not let it. ()jn, the contrary, hp increased the dose of party President. The consequence was tint, in 1864, the party which, at Grant’s first election, had a majority of two-thirds in the Representatives, lost its majority in that assembly, and did not - recover it for six years. Moreover, so sick was the party made by Grant's second dose of party President that, in 1876, its popular majority also vanished, and the interposition of a Louisiana Returning Board” alone saved .to its bosses the 'appointing power, the scandalous abuspof which had brought it so near4o (Uuith's door. Dr- Hayes undertook to cure the sick parjv of thp spoils distemper. Ho lixifed, partly from the lack of “backand pArfly from not grasping the nature and cause of the disease. Nevertheless, -his treatment benefited tiie patient. Alter all the denunciation pf’his course by the stalwart bosses of the machine, the party was in belter health at thh close of his ministration than ib had been-in many years. It regained its lost majority in the Repro'sentatives. It was able to keep the executive without the aid of a Louisiana Re- . turning Bpard, a batch of “visiting statesmen” and an “’Electoral Commission. Plainly, its health had improved under the treatment of a President who forbaflo his subordinates to use the public offices as manipulators of the party machine, and did not degrade his own-of-fice by engaging personally in the electioneering work of a machine politician. Great hopes wore felt that the beneficial treatment of the sick party by Dr. Hayes would be continued, with still better results, by Dr. Garfield. That such hopes would have been fulfilled there are some good reasons to doubt. But a machine politician of the name of Guiteau prevented the possibility of their fulfillment by removing Garfield and putting the sick party in the hands of political quack, Dr. Arthur, who immediately began to treat the ease Ujron the principle shiiilia similibux Cittantur, by dosing the patient with more party President than any previous party has ever lived or died under. No President, since Jackson, and not Jackson hinufelf, has so openly and unhesitatingly prostituted the powers and 1 duftesof his office to the service of a party machine as Arthur has. done. ’No Ptesident, benhath an assumption of dignity, Jigs betrayed alone of political morals so degi aded and vicious. No President, not even Grant, has ’ifdemed to form so degraded a concep•ijern oi'-|h< proper character of his office. . JJfo President, hl¥< ho viciously oyerfiteDped tile .pro]iei’ bounds of his Official junction to interfere with popular elections and supersede the electors * n . i ie f re ° exercise of their office. No President has so lUjerallv lent the appbinting power to party bo Res, or* permitted them to employ it so freely tor the corruption of electors awd the destruction of the elective independence. No President has so openly permitted and encouraged the infamous practice of levying contributions pn the public service to fasten fif)o;)'tbc people the intolerable tyranny T»f the machine, the damnable dospotikui of party bossism. Putting all in a single proposition, no President has given the country so large andmusehting a*i(tbse of q/ffr/i/ Presid nt ism as ihe present .incumbent. In a single year he has fiijed the land with the ac..cu.npilated onensiven ss of Grant’s eight year<,lost his majority in the Representatives, and carried his party back not oniv to tlie desperately sick state in ;i Hayes found it, but put it probably beyond (lie hope of resurrection. TJjis is, anil will be, the general vorMfct.” Mr. Grover Cleveland, not mis»interpreting the significance of his election over the president’s own candidate for. Governor of New York by more ’tiffin 160,600 votes to spare, has said, uhth ss much' truth as candor, that it .would ' l»e a mistake to infer from the result, that public sentiment is turning . ba-k to, flip old Bourbon party machine. u *Th j immGnate cause is the interferPnce of *tliA national Executive with the people’s politics.” It is, in other words, the spo'-ls disease, a more specific name for vdiieh would be the party-President diseasQ, ql**which the President’s party fias v rtually exp red. Let the country bury it, and inscribe on its gravestone, in plain words that even stupid keepers <if the aid Bourbon election machine eaft‘!reach. this fitting epitaph: Hia JACF.T DEFUNCTUS « S'. TSEiBEPUBLICAN PARTY. IN . ITS INFANCY A MOTIVE OF POLITICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS; IN ITSMATUKITY AN ; ORGANIZATION OF THE NOBLEST POLITICAL ASPIRATIONS OF A PEOPLE J IN ITS AGE AN ELECTION MACHINE ' MANIPULATED BY PARTY BOSSES, BROUGHT TO ITS DEATH BY AN OVERDOSE OF PARTY PRESIDENT. BEQUIESCAT IN PECTORE , JAY HUBBELL. Jack Canter, alias George Ripley, ’the forger, who was released from the Eastern penitentiary last week, had completed a seven years’ imprisonment •for raising the face value of stock of a fire insurance company, for the purpose of deceiving the insurance coinmjssioner with the show of a sound financial basis. W. D. Halfman, the president of the company, who was concerned in the fraud, .served a shorter toini. Canter has spent ftltogother -ftbqut Uiirty-two years m jail.