Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1884 — EMORY A. STORES. [ARTICLE]

EMORY A. STORES.

He Delivers an Eloquent and Characteristic Speech in T rempnt Temple, Boston. He Pays His Respects to Curtis, Schurz, and Other Apostles of “Purgatorial politics,” The Independents Falsely So Called—" Hot Shot for Bourbons—The People’s Choice. An Eloquent Review of the Two Principal Parties—No Fear for the Result. Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens: At this hour of the night it would be presumptuous in me to undertake anything like a full or elaborate discussion, either of the principles involved in the pending Presidential campaign orof the candidates themselves. It seems to me, since I read the papers this morning, that the necessity for very much discussion has passed, aud that political oratory has resolved itself, after all, pretty much into a hallelujah of great delight on the one side and a wail of lamentation on the other (laughter), with an occasional "bleak and dismal whistle coming from the brush and from obscure places in the scenery, lntended.no doubt, to keep up the courage of the whistler. [Laughter.! 1 am not unmindful whom I am addressing. I know 1 am In Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, in the New England States. lam a resident of the State of Illinois; I am a citizen of the United States. [Applause.] I am with you a joint proprietor of Bunker Hill [applause!, made so by the fourteenth and fifteenth constitutional amendments and have a common interest in Paul Revere and in that remarkable cargo of tea, the unshipping of which led to such splendid results a good many years ago. I am from what in New York has been characterized as the “rowdy West,” and what, by one at least of New England’s famous clergymen, has been denominated as the “riff-raff West." [Laughter.] May I say to you, because I know it will be something, that this characterization has not greatly distnrbcrt nsfn tire West, nor lias it made us angry ; and yet Senator Hawley will tell yon we do not lackspirit on a proper occasion. fLauehter.] We have an abundance of it. Don’t trifle with it. (Laughter.! Our State was the only State in the Union, Mr. Chairman, that filled Its quota without a draft [applause], and we sent over about eighteen thousand troops besides to Missouri, a strong Democratic Slate, as you may remember, which will cast Its electoral vote for Cleveland. lam not an Independent in politics. [Laugh-, ter,] I recognize no purgatorial politics, no halting, half-way station between heaven and hell. [Laughter.] To me it Is the heaven of good republic n government, or it is the hell of that diabolical, old, infernal Demoraatic party —[laughter]—that has never, in all its long, consistent, bad, and criminal career, done a right thing except at the wrong time. [Laughter.] I wish to say of this Democratic party nothing unkind or nngenerons, and of the Independents it Is my purpose to speak in terms of the utmost tenderness. [Laughter.]

“Why should we mourn departed friends?” When I read the announcement a few weeks ago, Mr. Chairman, that they had gone, 1 accepted it with a great deal of solid comfort and Christian resignation—(laughterl —bHt when I read along a little further, to the statement that their absence was to be temporary merely, and that they intended some day to return, I confess—who should not confess?—that my mind was filled with the' direst apprehension. Our party has made some mistakes. It you will permit me to suggest—it has been growing a little too rapidly at. the top [Laughter.] lam prepared to exchange political aisthetics for the horny-handed and the hard-fisted. [Applause.] 1 see Mr. Curtis and Mr. Schurz going lor the fourth or fifth time. [Laughter ] My feelings have been lacerated, and my heart has been wrung many times at their departure. They have played already too many farewell engagements. [Laughter.] I see coming to us in countless thousands the oldfashioned Democrats from whose eyes the scales have fallen, liberated and freed; and as I see the aesthetics going and the patriotic, hardworking citizens coming, I recognize the first rule of private hospitality. I "welcome the coming and speed the departing guests.” [Loud laughter, applause, and cheers, and a voice, “ Give it to them.”] We have heard in the West something about the "better element” of the party; I Laughter.! In our piain way, because we have been building Up States and cities and empires, and have not had time to bolt, we have thought that the better element of the party was the biggest element, and that the wisdom of this great party of ours was in the majority. Now, don’t you think so?' [Voices, ” Yes, stifrj Every time. I dislike this appropriation of the phrase ” The thoughtful and the conscientious citizens," by a tew gentlemen who do not act with the majority of the thoughtful and conscientious citizens. [Applause./ lam in favor of the scholar in politics; but, nevertheless, I do believe with Edmund Burke that it was the great good fortune of the British people that they were never ruled over a few months at a time by their philosophers and their wise men. My fellow citizens, the great reforms in this world, those retorms from which civil liberty and individual liberty have derived any benefit, have not come from the clouds down, but from the ground up. [Applause.] I believe in the spinal column of this country. I read the announcement, tor in the West we do take the Atlantic Monthly, and have gospel privileges [laughter], I read that these gentlemen are exceedingly solicitous as to what they call the purity of the young men. May Ibe permitted to suggest that the farmers of lllinoisand of the great West—those strong, splendid, broadbrowed, great, big-hearted men, those men who buned-tire-doctrine of fiat money under a majority of 40,000—think they are quite capable themselves of taking care of the morals of their sons. (Laughter.] And, most of all, they do not propose to turn the custody of these morals over to an assorted lot of gentlemen, half of whom deny the existence of a God, and the other half of whom believe that mankind, themselves included, were developed from an ape. [Laughter.]

Now, then, what does it mean to be independentin politics? If the word has a particle of significance it is a refusal to acknowledge allegiance to either of the great political parties of the country. These gentlemen are simply independent of the Republican party, to which they formerly belonged—spasmodically and occasionally belonged. Tney hate attached themselves to the Democratic party. And they are not independent of that when they acknowledge allegiance to it. HOW ABSURD IT IS. If a refusal to vote the Republican ticket and indorse Republican doctrines and to support Republican candidates is an evidence of independence, then the Democrat is a good deal more independent than the Independent, because he has that way as independent been independent a good while longer. [Laughter.] Will some astute logician tell me the difference between a genuine real old-lashioned and one of the original Democrats, this campaign, and the new article, the Independent? [Laughter.] They support the same man and for the same reasons. The old Democrat and his ally will support Grover Cleveland because of his high moral character. [Loud laughter and applause.] Mr. Chairman, I cannot understand why that should produce such a demonstration. [Laughter.] They support him, both of them, because he vetoed the 5-eent tare bill, because he vetoed the bill shortening the hours of labor for the street-car conductors and drivers, and because he vetoed the mechanics’ lien law in the State of New York. The Democrat and the Independent both support Mr. Cleveland for these reasons, among others, and for the same reasons precisely they both oppose Mr. Blaine. Mr. Schurz and Mr. Curtis both withhold their support from Mr. Blaine for the same re ason Hubert O. Thompson and Mr. Sheriff Davidson withhold theirs, exactly. They use the same methods, work through the same channels, and seek to accomplish the same end in exactly the same way. Both mourn when they are defeated, would rejoice if they could succeed, will be buried in the same common coffin [laughter, applause, and cheers], and when, after November, their bleached and whitened skeletons lie on the beach and shore of political defeat and disappointment, you can not tell the skeleton of an Independent from that of a Democrat. [Laughter.]

Tins is a very remarkable party of ours, the Republican party.- It never had, in all its long and splendid and lustrous career, a leader who could take it one single inch in the direction it didn’t want to go. (Applause.) Our leaders have sometimes left ns, and in a wholesale way". So mnch the worse for the leaders, so much the better for the party. [Applause.] In 1872 Governors and ex-Governors, Senators and ex-Sen-ators. Judges and ex-Judses, Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, crowds of them, left ns because the party, as they said, was corrupt, and how splendidly the old ship did right herself up after they got off. [Applause and langhter. i How magnificently she made for the harbor of a splendid success; and how desolate, discomfited, and water-logged have been the leaders who jumped "overboard ever, since. [Langhter.! There is another remarkable feature about our party which distinguishes it from the Democratic party. To write a platform ior the Democratic party reonires the very highest

degree of rhetorical and literary ability. [Laughter.] 1 think I possess some ability of that kind myself, yet I would not try It under any circumstances [Laughter.] There fe not a Republican m all the fifty-five millions ot people on this continent, who has got the faith ; In him,-Him cannot write a Republican plat-; form that is not a good Republican '■ doctrine everywhere. [Applause.] There is the same difference between the Democratic platform and the Republican platform that there! was lwtween pur present national currency and the old Stump-tall currency before the-war. Our platform is current everywhere. Did you ;;ver think what would happen to a Democratic orator If he had put his platform In his pocket at night and got on the train, and really landed In the direction lie didn't suppose he had gone? Suppose that he started from Chicago and was coming to Boston, but by some curious freak he landed at Atlanta or Savannah, and, thinking he was in Boston at the time, began to clamor for a free ballot aud a fair count! [Laughter and applause.] You see It is a question of climate; the platform IS LIABLE TO SPOIL with a change of weather. [Laughter.] Suppose that the patriotic Democrat—and there are many such—constructing his platform, after days and nights of anxious hair-pulling and headache, has made np his mind.as to what the concern means on the subject ot the tariff, and he starts out full of the idea that he is a friend of all God's creation and free trade . He is going South, as he thinks, ami the Penu-ylvania Railroad lands him in Lancaster, Pa., and, as a Democratic orator, he begins to talk in favor of free trade and lo give that construction to the platform. What kind of a funeral awaits that man? [Loud laughter and applause.] Our opponents object to our talking about our record. '1 hey decline to talk about theirs, and I don’t blame them. (Laughter.! in the few words I shall have occasjon to utter about the Democratic -party, remember that I-drew- a broad line of distinction between the party and the-membtrs of the party, the same that I would draw between a corporation and a stockholder, for instance. I know stockholders of the (Standard Oil Company, excellent, splendid, and worthy gentlemen, but the company [pausing solennly, laughter.] 1 know Democrats who are a great deal better than their party; I never knew any one worse. [Laughter.] This party to which the so-called and self-elected and selfappointed ‘'thoughtful and conscientious citizen” had attached himself! [Laughter.] This party that has shown how potent the “silent vote” is in Maine I loud laughter, applause, and cheers] and in Vermont. I have said they object to any discussion of their record, aud they insist upon it that when any of us begin to talk about it we are discussing old affairs. Now*it is no objection, gentlemen, to an issue that it is old, if it Ls not settled. [Laughter.] The preachers for a great many Jiundred years have been denouncing sin.; That ris a very old issue, one of the first I know of ; and I suppose they will keep at it till sin quits. It is about as hara for a political organization to unload its character as it is for a man. Political parties come lo the people of this country and ask for confidence and trust, and the peqple of this country, pretty intelligent and observing, look not so much at the vehemence and vigor of the promise as the probabilities that the promise shall be kept; and those probabilities they determine by the history of the individual or the party who makes it. Now, is not that the best kind of sense? If a»party promises to vindicate the public credit, that party, always having orders to destroy it, will you take the promise? IVoices: "No, no.”] Of course you .will not. If it pretends and promises to take care of our financial Interests, while Its history has been a steady line of effort to destroy them, will you accept the promise? I take it not. These are fair, square questions which every voter and every citizen must ask for himself and upon which he must act. —re-

Now, gentlemen, what is the record of the old Democratic party? If this hail were all tilled with Democrats, if every man here was a Democrat solid in the faith and firm in the belief, I could clear the hallln three minutes by reading them their own platform of 1868 or 1872. [LaughThey have never made a promise in which the Interests of this country have been involved that they have kept. There is no great measure of public policy which has contributed to the growth and the prosperity of the nation that that party has originated ore favored. In all its long career for the last thirty years there is no measure of that character which that party has not diabolically and demagogically anil unanimously opposed. Is there any one in thia large and splendid audience, in this old, splendid city of Boston, made memorable by the present, and sanctified in the hearts of ail our people by the tender and sacred recollections of the revolution—is there a single one of you, glorying in the greatness of our country, ot its past, its present, and in the sublime hope and promise of its future—is there a single one of you that can point me to one single thing within the last quarter of a century that this Democratic party has ever done or attempted to do, from which you as citizens draw any pride, or from tbe doing of which the country would have drawn any honor? Can you point me to one single great event in our history which makes up our patrimony and bur heritage as apeople that that party has not infernally opposed? [Laughter and applause.] Now that is a dreadful question, it is a solemn inquiry, and the dreadful fact of the matter is, that there is not one single instance, not one. Now, fellow-citizens, the Republicm .party, whose advocate in a very small way I am tonight, has never made a great promise that it has not religiously performed. : Applause.) Its promise of to-day is the statute of to-morrow, and its platform of to-day ripens into the fundamental law of to-morrow. [Applause.] It has crowded into its brief career of twenty-five 3-ears counted by achievements, a thousand 3-ears, and the greatest history that has ever been recorded. It made ou*- Territories all free. It elected Lincoln. By one supreme effort it lifted 4,000,000 of human beings from the night and shame and barbarism of African chattelage into th 3 clear and bracing atmosphere ot American citizenship. [Applause,] it paid a great debt. It lifted up to the highest pinnacle the national credit and the public good name, and it has placed this great country in the midst of a prosperity marvelous and unexamplod_ in the history of the world. [Applause.] Gentlemen, 1 can never tire of speaking of its glories. No one ever speaks of or recounts the adventures of the Democratic party, if I may- make one honorable exception. Thinking that they needed recruits in the State ts Maine, Gov. Hoadl>-, of Ohio, visited there and made several speeches—a notable one at Biddeford. He was at one time a Republican, and, feeling the need of a record, he furnished one to his Democratic friends in the State of Maine. I propose, for your information, to read it to you, for it is not long. It Is something new, fresh, has nothing of the mildew ot age about it, and quite in the nature of a discovery. [Laughter.] Gov. Hoadly, addressing a Democratic audience in Biddeford, spoke to them In the words and figures following: The Democratic party under [pausing] who do 3'ou suppose. Senator? Jefferson [loud laughter] added the Gulf States to the Union. [Applause.] The Democrats ot Biddeford never had heard of that before, evidently. iLanghter.J The Democratic party under [pausing] James K. Polk sent the American flag to the Pacific [lond applause] and gave us land enough for twenty States. [Applause.] “That is all. [Lond laughter and cheers.] The trouble with that record is. it begins too early and quits too quick. [Laughter.J

IT STOPS JUST BHOBT of the time when the thing begins to be interesting. It reminds me of the old news irom the Potomac: “Important if true.” [Langhter.] The Governor goes on, however, to say that at one time he was an Abolitionist. There is nobody here who will mention what lam going to say outside, but did yon ever see one of these washed-out Republicans who had faded into the Democratic party, sort of melted in, so to speak, that ever bragged about being a Democrat? [Laughter.] I never did. He was always proclaiming thp fact that at one time he was something better. He ussd to be a Republican [laughter]; like the decayed gentility you see in old States, that has seen better days, a little raveled ont at the edges and run down at the heel, but there are here and there marks which show that originally the goods were valuable. [Laughter.] He was an Abolitionist, Re says, when Logan was voting the Democratic ticket. Now there is a place where the Independents ' and their allies—the Democratic party—are entirely agreed. It is astonishing Mr. Chairman, how shocked these Independents are that Logan once voted the Democratic ticket. "Hendricks voted the Democratic ticket once—before the war, since the war, and now. Is it, after all, really the question when a man began to be an appstle half as mnch as it is how long he held ont? [Applanse.] Who began first, Judas or Saul of Tarsus? Judas, I think; and think of Judas running around in that Democratic region of his [langhter], jingling those thirty pieces of silver that he had got from the Democratic committee in his hands as the price of joining the party of parity and reform, and claiming that he. although notone now, was a Christian long before the scales fell from the eyes of the magnificent old Saul of Tarsus. [Laughter.] John A. Logan did vote the Democratic Gcket; but the first shot which exploded on the walhf of Sumter drove from him every spark of Democratic faith, and in the flame and thunder of battle he made himself the peerless soldier of. the war for the Union, [Great applause.] Take from the history of this country lor the last twenty-five years the soltd achievement and you make a charm; take from it the achievements of his detractors, and there is not an abrasion ' on the surface. [Applause.] Gentlemen, the hour is so late [Cries of “Go on!’] Oh,lam willing to go on. [Applause.] The life of a man is limited to ahont seventy years, and yon cannot expect me to spend all of {t in g (fin gin to detail as to the crimes and follies of the Democratic party. [Laughter.]

I was reading a Chicago pai>cr yesterday and 1 observed In ,it that a missionary had been sent from Boston to Chicago to organize the Independent movement. . It is one of these spontaneous, effervescent, outpouring, go-as-you-please, free-for-all-ages affairs that | . ( ; - NEEP A GOOt» DEAL 6t (XUftSIWO. [Loudlaughter.J There was a grand rally of the Independent party in Chicago; the whole five were present. I Laughter.! Some or them with. Mr. Gladstone's last speeches, others with, the Tali Mall Gazette, others w-ith essays from the Cobdcn Club, others carrying their canes in the middle. I Roars of laughter.] All bearing the marks of a disinterested and three-storied and mansard-roof patriotism. [Lond langhter.J Now, thife missionary stated to them that Massachusetts was going to give Cleveland a rousing majority. He was an Independent, a “thoughtful antfr conscientious” voter. Of course the statement was not false, hut was it not an extreme economy In the employment of truth? • [Laughter.) The Republic ’n party has made of jarring States a nation, and it has made that nation free —free in every sense and in its largest sense, and on this continent what an, edifice has It reared, the dome as broad and vast as the arching skies above us. from whose walls we have removed the decaying timbers of human chattelhi Od and replaced them with the everlasting granite of universal freedom. From those walls we have effaced the old, loul inscription of tjie bad old, times. The Dred-Scott decision, with its infernal doctrine, no longer flaunts its shame *in our eyes. The story of the escaping slave no longer is recorded on its banners; the crack of the old whip has died away; the bav of the pursuing bloodhound is a bad recollection of a had past; the imploring cry of. the pursued slave IS heard no more. But reddened as If a planet shone upon it, glistens there a republic beneath whose flag every human being is free, free to think, free to speak, and free to vote as ho pleases. The old blustering spirit of onr institutions before the war that elevated itself on its miles of boxes and bales, and chalked its dollar and cent marks all over God’s ten commandments, has been pulled down, and in its place, coming from her throne among the stars, is that radiant spirit which I worship in my waking hours and in my- dreams—the spirit of a mighty, free empire, with its glistening coronet upon her brow, with sword, and shield, and plume, taking the poorest of our citizens by the hand and saying, “By the living God, he shall be free” to think, to speak, re vote as lie pleases, and for the incarnation of that mightv spirit I urge the election aud shall vote for Blaine and Logan. [Great applause.]