Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1884 — THE WITTIEST YET. [ARTICLE]

THE WITTIEST YET.

Address of Mr. J. P. Dolliver on Taking the Chair in the lowa ConyentioHT r ' L; ' : Aiuiual “Elegy or Grier” for the Hawkeye Democrats—An Eminent Man Who Is Dead and Doesn’t Know It. Consciences with Alum in 'Em—Tight Pants and Hay-Fever—Deserting a Learned Profession to Become a Hangman. iFrdm the Chicago Tribune.] Below sire liberal extracts fi-om a speech of noticeable merit which was delivered in the Republican convention of \ lowa last week, which is attracting much attention. The speaker, Mr, J. P. Dolliver, is a young man of 26, who was notified of his selection as Temporary Chairman only a few minutes before he was called to the chair. It was delivered with such telling effect that it carried the convention by storm. It is filled with effective shots. Mr. Dolliver has rapidly developed great popularity as a speaker, and is now recognized in lowa as the leader of the young Republicans. He has been-invited to go into the national campaign, and in a few days will take the stump in West Virginia and later in the canvass will speak in Ohio and Indiana: Gentlemen of the lowa Republican Convention: Out of the abundance of my heart I thank you for the honor winch yeur favor has conferred upon me. It builds up a man’s political constitution to take a front view of the fighting strength of the Republican party of lowa. If any of you have friends that are bothered with political dyspepsia, who find trouble in selecting irom the 'printed bill of fare of Republican politics, I advise you to bring them here and let them look in the face of this magnificent assembly. Your conventions have always been deliberative, your nominations representative, vour campaigns popular, and your ballot-boxes too full for utterance of straight Republican tickets. Consequently, a Democrat has not been seen on the streets of an lowa city after 9 o’clock on election night lor a quarter of a century. The music of the telegraph office has been their annual elegy of grief. They look upon a bulle-tin-board as an enemy of free government, and accept the first half of Franklin's maxim, "early to bed,” when the returns are coming in. DEMOCK ATI C BANKRUPTCY.

The first act of the Democratic party is to file a schedule in bankruptcy. Already their property is out of their own name. Their national standard is in the hands.of a man whose name is not disclosed by the Democratic national record. Four years ago his name could have prudently been used as an alias under which to travel incognito all over the known world outside of Buffalo. To elect him President would be like lending money to a stranger on the train. It takes the cheek of the Democratic managers to plav the whole American people for suckers. I thank God that we belong to a party that saves the crown of its public honor for the brow of Its actual leadership. With the Democratic party nominations are made not so much to represent the party as to disguise it. In its long struggle for existence the men who have made the history of the party go to the wall. It is the only party that ever existed whose candidates and platform never throw any light whatever either on its management or its faith. In fact, modern Democrats of the practical school have no creed extent the oath of office. All the important Democratic principles are unfit for use. They have been left out in the field just where they were used last, with not even a bunch of swamp grass thrown over them—in sun and rain, until rot and rust have done their f&tsil work It is true they talk piously of the need of reform, and with an inexcusable libel accuse the integrity of the Republican civil service. They work their favorite classical allusion to the Augean scabies for all there is in it. These, they assert, must be cleaned out. Yet from the general appearance of the crowd that is on hand to do the business, the average citizen is likely to conclude that their intention is to steal the fork rather than clean out the bran. It is true they pre-empt all sides of the tariff question. They profess to settle that issue by a jargon of words without precedent in tne annals of nonsense and confusion. Yon might as well try to fit the hundred-headed dog of the ancient fable with a straw hat as to place a candid and Tfifemgßißr tariff -platform under the feet of the Democratic party. They approach that question and nearly every other like a man emptying hard-coal ashes in a high wind, with their eyes shut and their backs to the subject. AN “EMINENT DEMOCRAT." What must be the thoughts of a man like Mr. Thomas A. Hendricks as he sits In his law office and looks at the top shelf of his library, and counts the long row of dusty Congressional Globes from 1850 to 1880, from the fugitive slave law to the resumption of specie payments? Dean Swift used to say that censure is a tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. It is not the fault of Mr. Hendricks that the Congressional record connects him with all the blunders and treasons of recent politics. It is the tax a man pays to his gener < tion for the luxurv of having been an eminent Democrat. Victor Hugo, somewhere in the mastespiece of prose fiction, relates a singular dream of Jean Valjean, in which the unfortunate man is carried back m Ids vision to the streets of his native village, and there, in the midst of the gloom and ashes and dust of things, interviewed by a gentleman, who solemnly asks him: ‘ Where are you going? Do you not know you have been dead a long time? I have sometimes thought that it Mr. Hendricks could once get himself enlightened by an appropriate vision and wander back in his dreams to the familiar scenes of his public career, he would need no assistance to enable him to hear more than ono voice solemnly asking the same questions: “Where are you going? Do you not know you have been dead a long time?” THE FRAUD ISSUE. Mr. Hendricks is placed upon the Democratic ticket —not to recall the history of the Democratic party. No thoughtful Democrat wants that remembered. He Is on the ticket for the avowed purpose of reviving the superstition that surrounds the electoral count of 1877. With characteristic stupidity the Democratic managers still think that the American people have never slept well since that celebrated question of mathematics was up for settlement. They seem to be afflicted with a sort of intellectual shiftlessness that keeps them from the understanding that the fraud Issue died at Cincinnati in 1880 by the hand of Thomas A. Hendricks. The indictment of an alleged momentous outrage cannot be dismissed lor want of prosecution and the papers in the case left under the dußt of eight years without losing interest to the traveling public. With all due respect to Cob Vil s, of Wisconsin, I say the statute of limitations does run. Tho descendants of Cleopatra might as well bring suit against tho estate of Antony as for the Democratic managers t o para'de the venerable gentlemen who were caught between the wheels of the Electoral Commission. In truth, the American people, remembering the long years of political rapine that have given the South to the Democratic party, and finding Mr. Tilden and Mr. Hendricks the immediate and responsible beneficiaries of, these vears of felony against the ballot-box in the South, have never, to any visible decree, bewailed their memorable failure to catch the rail of the hind car in 1877. For one I thank the Democratic party for the fraud issue. Miserable and useless in itself, it affords the country a proper occasion to recall that strange decade from 1889.t0 1876, during which the Democ atic party, upon the ruins of the rebellion, contrived their infamous conspiracy against the civil rights of the people that in ten States has left the ballot-box a fraud and the election-day a farce. Laboulaye, the great French Liberal, now dead, just after the civil war in the United States, took occasion to sav that “the Republican party of America holds In its hands the-futur ;of civilization." That was true then. It is true now. It is more certain that the Republican party shall have a future than that it has ha d a history. THE KICKERS. Now and then yon find a Republican who enjoys the momentary importance that belongs to the kicker and the scratcher. The shortest road to celebrity nowadays is to advertise your conscience in the newspapers. There are Republicans who treat their conscience as if it were the stock in trade of a baking-powder factory. They solemnly protest that everybody’s conscience has alum in it except theirs. They adopt the doctrine of Matthew Arnold and insist that in order to be safe the nation mnst furnish the remnant with complimentary tickets and a front seat. They would have the country govern itself by the advice of persons whose names, if I may borrow a phrase from vonr godd friend Gov. Carpenter, are written in the herd-book of high political grades. ' Only last month a convention was held in a New York parlor, in which the only credentials called for bv the compUtt 'e were a written pretense of holiness, and the only creed required of the membership was •“I believe ~fn the com-

munion of the saints of Beacon Hill and Franklin Square ” Let the.m commune. I trust they will stick together till they get thoroughly acquainted with each other,: I- have a curiesityio see the effect of a genuine Democratic candidate on an nfinsually sanctified nostril. This campaign will last long enough to show to every sensible man s eye that no possible combination of tight pants and hay fever can defeat the anxious wlli of the real conscience of this country—the Republican millions of America. UNDER THE BOOTS OF THE HAiR. The people of this conntrv like brains -nervous matter under the roots of the hair. In James G. Blaine they find a man the scope of whose faculties is a perfect horizon — a man who knows the size of this na-tion-a man’ who knows the history of this nation—a man who knows the strength of this na'ion—a man who knows the rights of this nation—a man who comprehends with a serene faith the mission of the Republic and its sublime destiny in the midst of the nations and the ages. Not in vain has this great State—correct in its opinion, upright in its con-science-laid at the feet of Blaine the royal tribute of its affection. He stands to-day, at the very opening of ihe campaign,at once a standardbearer and a victor. Mr. Cleveland, as his letter this morning informs us. believes in Providence, and has the grace to say in his opinion, “the Supreme Being will always bless holiest human endeavors in the conscientious discharge of public duty.” lowa believed that before Mr. Cleveland thought of such a thing. God’s providence, you may be certain, never identified the names of Blaine and Logan in eternal’reputation with the most splendid pages of American history—the one as a statesman, the other as a soldier — only to see them defeated by a person who at the age Of 34 deserted a learned profession to become the hangman of a back county in New York.