Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1884 — A SCATHING INDICTMENT. [ARTICLE]

A SCATHING INDICTMENT.

Address of thw Massachusetts Independents. The address of the Independent Committee of One Hundred to the voters of Massachusetts is a very pointed and vigorous production. The question, it says, is not what the Republican party has done, but what it will do—not what it was, but what it is—not whether Lincoln and Seward and Sumner and Stanton and Fessenden were great men and great leaders, but whether Blaine and Robeson and Keifer and Elkins and Clayton and Kellogg are men to whom we can safely confide th 3 future of our country. The sins of Colfax, Delano, Belknap, Robeson, and Williams, and the Sanborn contracts, the whisky ring, and the starroute frauds are recalled, and referencs is made to the frauds in the Signal Service, the Treasury Department, and in other branches of the public support. The support of Mahone by the Federal Government is also pointed out in the scathing indictment. Then, in reference to Blaine, the address continues: ‘'The candidate of the Republican rarty for President is a man charged with the basest of public crimes, the abuse of official power for his own pecuniary advantage, who for e’ght years has never dared to demand that full investigation of the charges which his political associates would gladly have accorded, and by which alone those charges can be met upon the evidence already produced. We believe him guilty, and we know that many of his prominent supporters share our belief." The address points to the alliance of the Republicans and Greenbackers in West Virginia, and the political assessments which are being levied under a thin disguise, and, after declaring that the party is tending downward, concludes as follows: “By the nomination of James G. Blaine the Republican party has thrown down the gauntlet of corrupt and partisan government. The Democratic party answers the challenge. Its candidate is the acknowledged champion of reform and political honesty. The issue is thus joined. The leaders are representative men, the foremost of their kind, and we can not for an Instant hesitate in our choioe, or doubt what the true interests of our country demand. We do not ally ourselves with the Democratic party, still less sanction or approve its past, but its present candidate has proved his fidelity to the principles we avow, and in the coming election he commands, and will receive, our support."