Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1884 — CLEVELAND'S IMMORALITY. [ARTICLE]

CLEVELAND'S IMMORALITY.

What Would! Happen If Ills Example Were Widely. Imitated. “.Justice'' in New York Sun. The offense of Mr. Cleveland strikes at the foundation of society itself. With his example widely .imitated; and his conduct generally _-practiced; the entire fabric of our.social life would be saturated with rottenness, and the whole structure would totter to its fall We punish murder, and treason, and other crimes as threatening the existence of the body politic. But society is no safer where offences of the Clcvela ml class are condoned, and especially where those guilty of them are exalted to high and honorable official station. It may be seen in the Livening Host a venial offense to seduce a woman under promise of marriage. To be sure, under such circumstances, outraged kinsmen" sometimes , take the law into tlieir own hands, and occasionally the outraged woman herself shoots tuc offender. In such cases the community has come to regard the homicide with toleration if not with favor. But with the “lewd fellows of the baser sort" whom the Evening Host and its candidate represent, the matter is made the theme of ribald jest. Under the moit solemn pledges and assurances, Mr. Cleveland induced Maria Halpin to become to him a wife in all but the name. He seems to have been so much in earnest about it us to con-, template open marriage after morethaja three years It ad passed in that manner. But his chosen companions argued him out of it and laughed him out of it. lie was a putty in their hands, as his later conduct has shown. He discarded his victim, sending her child to the almshouse and herself to a madhouse. This is chapter 1. in ‘'The Bake's Progress." But a greater crime has been hinted-at. By a recent decision of the' Court of Appeals, rendered by. Chief Judge Folger, -a- nmmage-agree-ment entered into in good faith, though without a witness, is nevej'fheless a valid contract. Ts it true, then, that Matin Halpin, wronged and belied as she has been, is at this moment Grover Cleveland’s lawful wife? Cireimtstanttal evidence certainly seems to tell in that direction. In such case live criminality of Iris conduct is too enormous to permit of condoning. A woman of honest repute, laboring to support her children, is led to. believe herself a wife, till the man whom she had trusted abandons her, and then is turned adrift and— imprisoned in a lunatic asylum, y This is l the story in a 'few words'. Let fatliers read jt to -their wives ahd daughlers: let ' brother® and citizens consider it. and remember that the hero of this tale is a candidate for their suffrages as President. Should he, reeking thus with infamy, be elevated to the chief magistracy of the Nation, what condition of things, would exist in the White Housed Would any virtuous woman tolerate this moral leper who lias violated the family tie in every form? Bather will she not shun the betrayer of Maria Halpin and of her child as she would the touch of contagion or the embrace 'of death?