Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1884 — MR. BLAINE DEFENDED. [ARTICLE]

MR. BLAINE DEFENDED.

An Eloquent Speech by Senator Hoar, of MassaA . 7 '■ Delivered at the Great Repub* iican Meeting at Boston. The first question, compared to which every other is petty and trifling, is that of the supremacy of the Constitution itself. I know not what others may think, hut I cannot stand in Faneuil Hall in honor, when I know that in great States the right of suffrage is practically denied to my countrymen. Ido not think my own right to vote for President is of much value, if the man of my choice is to be defeated by such processes as prevail at the South. There are three States—Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina—to say notnlng of others, in which, beyond all question, the electoral vote recorded at the coming election will have no relation whatever to the will of the people. These three States cast twenty-six electoral votes; with Virginia they cast, forty. Now', giving to Gov. Cleveland all the States that his most enthusiastic supporters can hope for, he will fall far short of an election, unless the votes of these States, wrested from their Republican majorities by crime and fraud, are to lie counted in his favor. The young reformer who Votes for Gov. Cleveland cannot help to elect him. He can only help to make possible the successful accomplishment of the crime toy which a minority shall usurp the" government of the country. The process is very simple and familiar. It is known as the Mississippi plan. Violence and murder are made use of until the minority get the election offices in into their hands, and thenceforth the ascendancy is maintained by the easier way of tissue ballots and fradulent counting. These things will scarcely be denied by a Southern Democrat in private. The leading Democratic papers in each of these States I have named, have in substance admitted these facts, and all but one have vindicated them as a necessity. You tell me Gov. Cleveland is not responsible for these things. If he were to declare in a manner that showed he was in earnest, that he would, if President, use the power vested in him for their suppression, or if he should declare, as an honest man should do, that he would not take an office gained by such means, he could not get a Democratic vote south of Mason and . Dixon's line. Another question next in dignity, is that of the wages of the American workman. We do not accept the ■ teachings of that political economy, with its tidings of despair, which tellS us that it is the lot of the . workman forever -to toil for barn, life. Wei believe this country is governed, is to be governed, and ought to be governed, by themen who work with their hands on farms and in shops. Unless these men shall have a return for their labor, which shall bring them leisure, comfort, education for their children, they cannot preserve the qualities needed for citizenship, and the republic must fall. There may be a great and powerful nation on this continent on other terms, but there cannot be a great republic. This end can only be secured by the maintenance of the American system. The prices of many other things, the rates of exchange, are, in the artificial arrangements of commerce, determined in Great Biitain. We do not propose to annex American labor to that market. We believe that by a judicious system of protection, framed for that purpose, this result can be and is secured, and that agriculture, manufacture, and commerce will alike be benefited. A few theoretic economists, a few college professors, and the great bulk of the old owners of plantations and slave labor, differ with us. We propose to debate that question with them, and take the verdict of the American people. The Republican party has nominatecTfts candates and framed its platform. Your delegates, in obedience to what they believed to be the wish of their constituents, voted for the distinguished statesman from Vermont. But we are bound to say that there was never a nomination made under circumstances more entitled to respect. The unit rule, wliicljjormerly threatened to trammel the free choice of the people, was overthrown. The holders of office were in almost solid column for another candidate. Ido not believe that until within a few days Mr. Blaine either sought or expected the result. It was the irrepressible act of the people who "had eyes and chose him ’’ Look at the States and communities who have made this choice. They are the very flower of America. . . . Fellow-citizens, this is the nomination of what .is best in our American life. It is the nomination of what is best in human society the round world over. It is the nomination of the great free States. It is the nomination of the church and of the school-house, it is the nomination of the men who own and till their own farms. It is the nomination of the men who perform skilled labor in our shops. It is the nomination of the ..soldier, of the men who went to the war and stayed all through. It is the nomination of the - men who paid the debt and kept -the currency sound, and saved the nation’s honor. It is the nomination of the men who saved the country in war, and who have made it worth living in in peace. This, fellow-citizens, is the "riffraff of the Republican party that surrounds ■James G. Blaine." The people knew well what they were doing. Mr. Blaine, if we except our great soldiers, has been for nearly twenty years the most conspicuous personal presence in the country. He has dwelt in his simple American home in Augusta and Washington,with wdfe and children. Into the inmost recesses of his life a blazing light has been constantly poured. He is the choice of what is best in character and what is most progressive in opinion throughout the whole country. Gentlemen tell us that he has done nothing of memorable public service. I had thought otherwise. I had thought him one of the very greatest of the great leaders who have conducted the American people along the difficult pathway of danger and of glory which they hive traveled for the past twenty years. I had thought his hand was found in the framing of the fourteenth and fifteenth - amendments. I had thought—indeed, I had known—that he was in the very inmost councils when the resumption act was framed, and that his influence carried it through the House over which he presided. I had thought that he had been Speaker of the House of Representatives during six crowded and eventful years. I had thought that among the great orators of the country he had been of the vexy greatest and most persuasive in the debate which satisfied the American people to take up the heavy burden of the debt, to keep its currency depressed and its credit safe. I hid thought that when In Maine the ambitious larceny of the Democratic party undertook to pilfer a whole State Government at once, it was his leadership that by peaceful and lawful methods baffled the conspiracy and saved the State. I remember too the next year. wken the llevublicans had the temptation to retaliate in kind and exclude Gov. I’laisted by technical objec-. tlons, it was Mr. Blaine who said "One majority lor Mr. Plaisted shall be as good as a thousand.” They say Mr. Blaine is a “Jingo.” He is just such a “Jingo" as was John Quincy Adams. The malice of his detractors brings against his personal integrity a single charge which is supported by no proof and refuted by every witness who knows the facts, and a single phrase in a letter which is fully susceptible of an honest construction. It is said that the President of the United States ought to be like Caisar’s wife, above suspicion. I have one thing to say about Caesar. Ca sar did many base things; among them was the destruction of the liberties of his country; but he never did a baser thing than when he abandoned his wife because somebody slandered her.

I wish to say a word concerning Mr. Blaine’s associate on the ticket, whom for fifteen years I have had abundant opportunity of knowing. Gen. Logan’s opinions and character have been a constant growth from the time he entered public life as a Democratic Representative from Egypt thirty years ago. I have not explored, but I have no .doubt if you were to look back among forgotten records, you would find many opinions that he expressed and many votes that he gave with which you and 1 should nave little sympathy. But wnat of that? He was born again in the day of the great regeneration. He went through the baptism of fire and blood, and ever since has been true as steel on every question of patriotism and freedom. He is the type and representative of the American volunteer soldier. He entered the war a private. He came out the highest in rank and the most famous of all the rfien who enlisted from civil, life. EVer since, the people of his great State have kept him in public service In House and Senate, until the other day she presented him at Chicago as her candidate for the highest office. If anybody questions Gen. Logan's civil capacity, I should like to have him try his hand at encountering him in debate. I see the President of Harvard tells his neighbors that the platform is immoral and demagogical. Well, I differ with the worthy President. The Republican platform states squarely and cleanlv what a majority of Republicans think. The civil-service plank was drawn by Geo ge William Curtis, and that about the surplus by Cabot Lodge. President Eliot thinks the civilservice resolution is not honest. Well, I Would rather stand for civil-service reform with the men who passed the law of last year, with Edmunds and Hawley and John Sherman and Dorman B. Eaton, than with the men who retired Pendleton to private life. President Eliot does not like the Chinese'resolution. I quite agree with him. I like toe Declaration of Independence better.' But Dam sorry to say that the policy of Chinese exclusion is in accord-

ance with the opinion «t a large majority of the American people of both parties. We must submit to it till we can convert them. President Eliot expresses the sentiment of a little body of men about Cambridge; I am happy to lieUeve he does not represent the college—whose influence, in my judgment, has tended infinitely to degrade the public life of the Commonwealth. These men have taught our educated youth to be ashamed of their own history. They have told them that “since the close of the war there has been no time when a young man knew how he could honorably serve his country.” They were preaching in the spine strain during the war and before the war. Their eyes are microscopes which can see a blemish on the skin, but cannot take in a fair landscape or a healthy humau figure. They can find no statesmanship and no public virtue in the payment of the debt, in the settlement of the currency, in the return to specie payment, in the sublime clem-! ency that dealt with the conquered after the war, in the great self-restraint of the Alabama treaty, in the miraculous development of our manufacture, in the creation of our great domestic commerce, in the peaceful settlement of the disputed Presidential succession. There is hardly a man who has taken any of the responsibilities of public life who has not been compelled to undergo the contemptuous criticism of these gentle hermits of Cambridge. It has been so from the beginning. Even the men whom they are now most eager to praise, and whose examples they cite to show the decay of modern statesmanship—they dealt the same measure to in their time—John Adams and his illustrious sons. Sumner, Andrew, Wilson, as they erect their mausoleum to each, they should write over it the inscription "Our fatheis stoned this prophet, and we build his sepulchre."