Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1896 — A REMARKABLE PARALLEL [ARTICLE]

A REMARKABLE PARALLEL

A Letter by Mr. Jefferson Which Aptly Applies to the Present Situation. In 1800, when the Federalist party was virtually wiped out, Thomas Jefferson wrote his friend and Virginia neighbor, Massel, then In France, a letter in which he gives a strikingly accurate outline, not only of that campaign, but of this. "The aspect of our politics," Jefferson writes, "has wonderfully change* since you left us. In place of the noblo love of liberty and republican government, which carried us triumphantly through the war, an Anglican party has sprung up whose avowed purpose It is to draw us over to the substance, as they have already done to the forms, of the British government. While the main body of our citlxens remain true to Republican institutions • • • against us are the executive, the federal judiciary, two out of three branches of the legislature, all the officers of the government, all timid men who prefer the oalm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty, all British merchants and Americans trading on British capital, all speculators and brokers, and with them the banks and dealers in the public funds (Unite* States bonds) —a contrivance invented for the purpose of corruption an* for assimilating us to the rotten, as well as to the sound parts, of the British model. It would give you a fever if I were to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies —men who were once Solomons in council and Samsons in the field, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot kingland. In short we are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils. But we shall preserve it!” "The American people have never failed in any crisis in the past, nor have they reason t*> believe that they will fall in this great crisis. It Is true that wo have on the other side n< great a campaign fund as was ever raised In American politics. It Is true tli.it t hey are resorting to intimidation and coercion as they uovsr resorted to them bnt'.re, but, my friends, while money talk', money don’t vote la tha United States.”—W. J, Bryan, “We can afford to be poor," sal* General Russell A. Alger, of Michigan, who is fdiaperoning a crowd of "generals” around the country, speaking in McKinley’s interests, “We can afford to be poor,” said he, addressing a crow* of workingmen at Kansas City, "but we cannot afford to be dishonest. Wa must pay everything we owe with 100-cent dollars.” This the Very identical Millionaire Alger whom Senator Sherman deliberately charges, in his book, upon conclusive proof, with buying the votes of negro delegates instructed for himself in the national Republican convention of 1888. Can such a man teach workingmen henest finance.