Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1888 — Brave and Wise Words. [ARTICLE]

Brave and Wise Words.

The 'lndiana Chr’st’an Advocate is edited by T. A- Goodwin, who has been a leading advocate of the temperance cause in this state for about fifty years, and an advanced Prohibitionist for ofer thirty years. Recently Dr, Parkhurst, of the theological department of ■ DePauw University, delivered an* address in which the following language occurs: t ' “If I thought the RcpublieQn party in Indiana could and Would .strike the saloons a dellth blow 1 would gladly help her to do it. I will aid either of the old parties that <ill give us even a chance at local option." Commenting on this declaration the Advocate says.’ “These are Lraye and wise wprds and they must have fallen like‘a wet blanket on that little coterie of politicians whosechief aim is to destroy the Republican party. Dr. Parkhurst has been in Indiana only a little over a year. He came from rum cursed Chicago, which like beer cursed Cincinnati, gives coloring to the politics of the state, and being occupied in the duties of a heavy pastorate and, of a professor’s chair,, ho has not made himself acquainted with the condition of things in Indiana ; hence he has thought the only place for him was in a distinct prohibitory party, as we concede it would be in Illinois. It will be observed, that, like a wise man, he does not require that the Republican party every where must measure up to his standard. He says that if the I|epublican party inlndiana could and would strike a death blow he would gladly help it. That is the true doctriue. Now, vyhat are the historic facts? The Republican party has not had power to pass any party measures since 1873. It then passed the Baxter bill, Under which more than half the state was put under prohibition. The next year it was ; de seated, while pledged to local option, by a plurality of more than 17,000, and XT HAS NEVER HAD CONTROL OF THE Legislature since. And now shall we curse it because it has not done what it could not do for want of power. No better local option bill ever passed any Legislature than was passed by the Republican house in 1887. In 188.1 all that the temperance people asked of the Legislature was the submission of a constitutional The Re publicans of the Legislature with but two or three exceptions, voted for it; but when in 1882, they put that in thejr platform, they were again defeated at the polls by a large majority. We submit: Is it generous to say that a party with such a record would not legislate for temperance if it could. •We beg to call Dr, Parkhurst’s attention to another historic fact of great significance. He has fallen into the mistake of many that a prohibitory party is necessary to enforcement of a prohibitory law, in the face of the fact that the prohibitory law of Maine, by the uniform testimony of all, has been enforced as well as any other criminal law for more than thirty years without such a party, that the prohibitory laws of lowa and Kansas are as thoroughly enforced today as the laws against murderer arson or burglary are where there is not a ghost of a prohibitory party. But we have a case nearer home. In Indianapolis, under a police force that was controlled by the Democratic state officers,. there was not even a semblance of enforcing the very little law we have, but as soon as the Republican state officers got control of the city police everything was changed, so that to-day the liquon laws in Indianapolis are as rigidly enforced as the law against highway robbery and burglary and murder—even better, all things considered —and it is not the least grief of a citizen of Indianapolis that good, men under the guise of promoting temperance, are doing their best to return us to the tender mercy of the Democratic party and the open saloon. We are shre that Dr. Parkhurst will not join them. What he has Said and done in that direction has been said and done under a mistake as to historic facts. Like the good boy in the Bible, who, under the impulse of the moment, said he'wouldn’t,, but on further reflection repenb-d and did it, so Dr Parkhurst.and thousands more will be with us in our fight against the saloon along the only line that ever has been successful—the purely non-partisan line. > The doctor must be aware of one other fact: The Republican party in Indiana, both by its platform and the personnel of its tickets, for two years, at least, has put itself in defiant antagonism to thesaloon power in the state. Its proposed measures may net quadrate in detail with what we or Dr. Parkhurst would propose. We are free to say they do not. Mr. Lincoln’s pdlicy, in the "early part of the war. was very objection able to the anii-slav-ery men of that period, yet with very few exceptions they gave him and his policy their most cordial support, because it was good as far as it went, and all of his grew to the proper standard. “So let us take the Gordons, of Putnam, the Pattons of Sullivan, uncompromising democrats, and the Hustons of Fayette, and the Campbell and ' es of Hendricks, Tby the hand and stand by them individually, and by their par ties, as far as their parlies go with us. And to that Dr. Parkhurst pledgee himself lirliU debliuration of falt^,’ ’