Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1884 — THE CHARGES AGAINST BLAINE. [ARTICLE]

THE CHARGES AGAINST BLAINE.

Prof. G. F. Wright, of Oberlin College, Declares They Are Xot Protend [Letter in Cleveland Leader.] Th > conclusions to which my investigations have led me are briefly these: The charges against Mr. Blaine are far from being proved.—Many at them -we—can clearly show to be erroneous, and the worst of them admit of an explanation, unless we go open the principle that with public men the worst possible construction should always be put upon their actions and words. But, in our opinion, the position of Mr. Blaine is such—he has been so long open to public critclsm, he is confided in so largely by the best of men of the Republican party, who have had ample opportunities to know Idm, among others by President Garfield —that his dubious actions are entitled to a generous construction. It is asserted, I know, that Edmunds distrusts Mr. Blaine, and that he “has repeatedly said in public that Blaine in the Sefiate was the tool bf Jay Gould.” But Mr. Edmunds has presided at a Blaine meeting since the nomination, and nowstates that he never said any such thing as that Blaine was the tool of Gould in the Senate, and that he qould not have said it, because he never thought it. 1 f there is one discouraging thing in the present political campaign, it is that the Democrats and the independent Republicans are both so ready to hold in abeyance their pu itical princi•pies, under the hopes of sailing into office on the strength of the personal prejudices they hope to rouse against Mr. Blaine by their own misreprentations. Misrepresentation is all the stock they have in trade. I have had this consideration forced upon me during the extensive trip made this summer through Missouri, Southern Illinois, Inriiafla, Kent tick}’. Ohiff, and Western Pennsylvania. In the guise of a geologist I have been permitted incidentally to ascertain the sentiment prevailing in the saloons and kindred places, where the rank and file of Democracy scend their leisure_bours. So far as I have read this public sentiment, the mam re® - sons urged-for the triumph of the Democratic rar: y are two: First, to get the__Repu bl leans out of office ; second, to rebuke the temp irance sentiment which so manifestly prevails among the Republicans. The opposition of the Democratic party to sumptuary laws tells the whole story. The Democratic party is opposed to all positive legislation infavor otemorality. They are opposed to .temperance laws and to Sunday legislation, and for this reason I cannot b< lieve that the Prohibitionists will tlioiightlessTy throw the power into their hands. And how the civil service reiofinefs should hope to promote their cause by inaugurating a party whose first move, logically and necessarily, will be to make a clean sweep of all the officers, from the clerk at Washington to the lighthouse keeper at Alaska, is more than I can comprehend-