Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1884 — Blaine a Know-Nothing. [ARTICLE]

Blaine a Know-Nothing.

Blaine was a Know-nothing in 1865, and the editor of the Kennebec Journal. On the 10th of January, 1855, he said: ‘ “The Governor alludes to the many and serious evils entailed upon our community by the hasty admission of foreign immigrants to the right of suffrage, and suggests that the Legislature, in the discharge of its appropriate duties, investigate ‘whether new legislative provisions are necessary to preserve the sacredness of the elective franchise, and guard the purity of our institutions.’ This is a question upon which there is such unanimity of belief among the American people that it can hardly be doubted it will be acted upon by the next Congress, and the abuses under which we have suffered either wholly abated or seriously diminished." On the Bth of the same month and year he said: “We need stringent laws to regulate the immigration from Europe, and faithful officers to administer them. If the present abuses are not corrected, and corrected speedily, we shall become worse than Botany Bay.” "The political reform (Know-nothmg party) which sprung up the past year has only had Its beginning; the end Is not yet. The issue of the next Presidential election is to be determined by the political movements of the year. If they be wisely and honestly made, the friends of freedom and American rights will certainly triumph, and the great result will be checking of the growth of the slave power and a judicious settlement of the basis of citizenship by reform In our laws of naturalization.” The new-born fondness of the Republicans for their Irish fellow-citizens, whom they have always sneered at heretofore, recalls Gen. Scott’s futile attempt to ingratiate himself with the same class of his countrymen when he was running for the Presidency. His admiration, openly expressed in a public speech, for “that rich brogue” became one of the by-words of the campaign with his “hasty plate of soup;” but it brought him no votes any more than the “blarney” of Blaine’s blowers will to the guano statesman. Forty temperance Republicans of Rockford, Illinois, with whom interviews have been held by a reporter of that city, express their intention to vote for St. John for President. A canvass in two wards of Wheeling, W. Va., showed 150 German Republicans who will vote for Cleveland and Hendricks.