Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1884 — The Political Pharisees. [ARTICLE]

The Political Pharisees.

The forthcoming struggle for the Presidency -between the two great parties will be too serious to allow the little discontented cliques in New York and Massachusetts who hang on to the Republican party in calm weather and desert it in the storms to masquerade as “Reformers” or Independents any longer. Their only ides of reform is not to make any change within the party by aiding it, but outside the party by assaulting it. Provided some man is named as a candidate who is acceptable to them, they are ready to reform the party, if only they do not have to associate with it If the candidate is not acceptable to them they go over to the Democratic party, whose only doctrines are spoils and State sovereignty, and vote for candidates who they know will reform nothing. There is but one title which fitly describes these gentlemen, and that is, political Pharisees. Like the Pharisees, they assume to “sit in Moses’ seat.” Like the Pharisees, they “say and do not. ” When Mr. Curtis arose in Moses’ seat he said he and his clique were honorable men -or they would not be there as delegates to the Republican Convention, but they are not acting honorably. Like the Pharisees,', they “make broad their that the people may imagine they alone carry the Republican law and gospel on their breasts and that they -are the only guides whose counsel it is safe to follow*. Like the Pharisees, they “love the uppermost rooms at feasts, the chief seats in the synagogues, and greet-

ings in the markets.* Like the Pharisees, they make their own opinions and pass them off as law. Outwardly they appear righteous and within they are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. “I thank Thee that lam not as other men are,” is their motto. Not being as other, men are, they have no honest affiliation with other men, no common basis of action with other men, unless the other men condescend to follow their lead and accept their demands, which is in itself the essence of hypocrisy. They are like the moral little boys who played marbles with Emery Storrs—when he was a youngster. Storrs says that when the good little boy won he put Storrs’ marbles in his pocket and went home; when Storrs won, the good little boy wanted to have his marbles back, and to play the game over again. Like the Pharisees, they assume to monopolize all the virtues, which have proved to be of such a Democratic sort that in 1876 they supported Tilden, in 1880 they, supported Hancock, and a year later they supported Butler in Massachusetts. One would not have to look far to find that Mr. George William Curtis is the chief rabbi among the Pharisees, and wears the biggest phylactery. In May, 1876, he examined Mr. Blaine’s record, and pronounced it spotless and satisfactory. In 1884 he refuses to support him, on the ground that his record is not good, though no new charge has been fabricated by his enemies. In 1882 Mr. Curtis quoted Mr. Blaine’s speeches in favor of civilservice reform. In 1884 he opposes him on the ground that he has not advocated civil-service reform, and now he crowns his hypocritical record by declaring that “Blaine was doubtless the choice of a large majority of the Republican party, ” and, by refusing to support him after taking part in the convention, sets himself up as above the laws of honor and as knowing more than the Republican party, and being better than its majority, which ‘is Phariseeism personified, and repeating itself in the old “I thank Thee that 1 am not as other men are.” — Chicago Tribune.