Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1884 — To The Dissatisfied Ones. [ARTICLE]

To The Dissatisfied Ones.

[Boston Pilot,] To the dissatisfied ones we say as we have said to ourselves: Look around, and see where you are going if you leave the Democratic fold. Democrats belong to a party of beliefs, duties, principles. Can they desert it for a party of ofiicbs, men and privileges? Looked at with ethical or practical eyes, the exchange would be deplorable folly. The Republican party is tottering on its last legs; its work is done; it has nothing but the spoils to live for. The most selfish but the most clearestsighted of its members are flying from it, as rats desert a sinking ship. Their “moral objections” are pretense and excuse for the desertion; the same men accepted Hayes and Garfield, the one coated with a false title and the other stained with a personal history quite as dark as Blaine’s. To Irish-Americans in particular we say: What is the record of the Republican party in relation to you for the past twenty years? What American citizen of Irish birth has it protected abroad? What shameful outrages on Ameri can citizenship has it not allowed when England was the perpetrator and citizens of Irish extraction the victims?

Not one Republican has been moved to redress these astonishing evils, except President Arthur’s; and he had to whisper and smile his objec tions, because he represented the Republican party. Mr. Blaine’s voice during all those years, and when he sat in the cabinet as secretary of State, would have been powerful to correct; but it was never raised—not once. We say to Mr. Blaine now that had he been a defender of the right of naturlized citizens when those citizens were thrown into foreign prisons, untried and uncharged, the Pilot would support him today, and a million American of the Irish race would vote for him in November. But he did not do it, and his pretensions of fair play and friendship are now sneer humbug. He and his party have a lession to learn from ail this; and so has the Democratic party. The advantage of the

latter is that its lesson lies in its coming opportunities. One-third of the American people belong to the Irish race. They have a malignant and powerful enemy, always seeking to destroy her mother country, which it has invaded gagged and robbed; and always seeking, in order to justify and protect itself, to destroy the good name and influence of irishmen and their kindred in this country. Every citizen has a vote, as every savage has a knife—to protect himself and his interests The Irish-American who would trust the Republican party with his vote, after these twenty years experience, would be as foolish as the Indian who had ti usted its rascally agents on the reservations. * * * * •* * We do not believe in sudden conversions under the suction of necessity Weliked Blaine’s “foreign policy,” it had an American ring to it that was good to hear amid the jabber of tlie dudes who are ashamed to be American But Mr. Blaine, powerful and brilliant as he is, is not the Kepublican party; and we do not believe, when in power, he Would be allowed by his party, even if he had the will himself, to have any policy but one in keeping with his own narrowness and selfishness.