Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1888 — THAT COWARDLY SPEECH. [ARTICLE]

THAT COWARDLY SPEECH.

INGALLS WILL HAVE A CHANCE TO TRY OBSCURITY HIMSELF. Senator Ingalls undoubtedly knows Dy this i.me that even from a partisan political standpoint he made a miser,. ide mistake in deli' ai'iag his iccviit speech in the senate. d s abuse of Hancock and McClelku raids but a faint approving response from even the most rabid party organs, while it is being resented m such a manner by many of the soldiers of the country, irrespective of politics, as to make the rebuke to the Kansas senator conspicuously severe. That a man of Mr Ingalls’ ability and ambition should descend to bid for the favor of th sol iers in the discreditable way he did, and then inspire as his reward the indignation and condemnation of the soldiers, must be extremely humiliating to him. It will probably be many a moon before he his anything to say in public again about the war, or those who figure in it. If he is as shrewd as he has been heretofore credited with being, he will leave, henceforth a field in which he has made such a spectacular failure to mor successful cultivators of it, lik,? the governor of Ohio, who, even if he were to provoke such a rebuke as the Kansan has received, is so small that it would never hit him.

Meanwhile, as he is pondering in penitence over the blunders of a politician, he might reflect advantageously on ano her of his declarations made in the same speech, when he proclaime :, with what was intended as withering sarcasm, that after the nomination of Grover Cleveland there is no man in this country “whose obscurity is so impenetrable that he has no right to aspire to the presidential nomination of the Democratic party.”

In the course of his reflections perhaps Mr. Ingalls will be able to arrive at some definite conclusion as to the exact time at which obscurity became a crime under our government, or a disability in the path of the citizen of the United States who dares direct his ambition to the presidency of a republic built upon the principle that all men are equal. Perhaps Mr. Ingalls will also be able to explain, at least to his own satisfaction, how it is that in censuring the Democratic party for nominating a man who not so many years ago was undoubtedly an obscure man, he can at the same time escape censuring the Republican party on the same ground. Who was more obscure than L nccln, the first of the Republican presidents? Did President Grant emerge from less “impenetrableobscurity” than any man who ever rose to fame? Even the now distinguished and canorized Hayes was not always like the effulgeni luminary which he became when he shot above the Ohio horizon and achieved notoriety as the first and only man who ever robbed the people of the presidency. It was the boast of the Republicans during the Gar field campaign that their leader had risen from the humble obscurity of the towpath, and President Arthur’s name was h irdly known outside of New York before Secretary Sherman gave him promD nence by summarily turning him out of the custom house.

Whera then is the Republican president who was not guilty of the crime of obscurity, if this apostle of Republicanism insist on denouncing it as a crime? Perhaps senator Ingalls is in fayor of making the presidency hereditary, as the crowns of Europe are, conferring the honor upon some distinguished family, and providing that it shall do-cend in a regular line of succession to whatever unobseure nincompoop whd happens to be born in that line. By th’s means the danger of xny political party nominating • and electing an obscure candidate wo’d be effectually guarded against, and all citizens es the nation would be

saved the trouble of trying to overcome the sin of obscurity. To say the least, this is a very prevalent sin among the citizens of this country. It even rumored —upon how trustworthy authority authority we dn not pretend to say —that senator Ingalls himself was, not so very long ago, an obscure peddler. . But we know of no one who would think less of Mr. Ingalls on that account, unless it is Mr. Ingalls himself. Indeed, if the goods he peddled were honest we are very much inclined to think that most people in this country have greater respect for Mr. Ingalls as a peddler than they have for him when, as a senator, he deals in such shoddy pinchbeck wares as he purveyed when he delivered his speech n the senate.— Louisville Courier-J ourn al. Take your butter and eggs to J. W. Duvall, at the new Grocery, and get cash or goods for them.