The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-09-07

parties have never attracted any considerable
number of adherents outside of New England,
but the earnestness with which the new move
ment is opposed by leading Republican jour
nails in the West, indicates that they are fear
full that some of their partisan followers may
be captured by the proposed new organiza-
tion. Whatever be the intention of its pro-
jectors, it is evident that it practically ex-
tends aid and comfort to the Democracy, who
will not lose one man for every ten recruited
from the ranks of their adversaries.
This fact being admitted at Chicago, the
leading speakers complained that, while tenn
perance had received some incidental aid oc-
casionally from the Republican party, it was
nowhere openly committed to prohibition,
and nowhere willing to eject "dram-shop"
men from its ranks. A New Jersey delegate
said that when he wished to control the Re-
publican conventions or caucuses of that
State he always found them assembled in
lager beer saloon, and it was the same all
over the country" An Illinois speaker said
that eff the Republican party did not come
up to time they would split it up and split it
down" A speaker from Michigan denied
that the Republican party had lever inaugu-
rated measure of prohibition" A speaker
from the old Bay State contended that the
Republican party ''had done nothing in Mas
sachusetts for temperance though Republi-
cans individually had" A female orator from
Minnesota said that 'the new party would
be built on the ruins of the Democratic and
Republican parties, whose ruin was caused by
whisky and lager" A speaker from Wiscon-
sin claimed that ''the first prohibitory law in
this country was enacted by the Democratic
party" Gerrit Smith, of New York, said
that the Republican and Democratic organi-
cations will both be ''rum-soaked as long as
they continue to be parties, and that ''those
of their number who would escape from their
guilty responsibility from the dram-shop and
its horrid work, cannot do so without sunder-
ing their connections with them" These and
similar arguments overruled the protests of
many of the delegates present against the
formation of an entirely distinct political or
ganization, and it remains to be seen how
much influence they will exert upon the large
body of temperance Republicans who have
hitherto made their love for prohibition sub
ordinate to their regard for their party.
The new organization proposes to agitate
for effective legal prohibition by Congress, as
we'll as the State Legislatures, on the ground
that ''the traffic in intoxicating beverages is a
dishonor to Christian civilization" and that
its suppression is necessary to the zen Joy
ment of personal security, personal liberty,
and private property
Gerrit Smith proposes that no drink should
be prescribed by name, but only such ''as
have power to intoxicate OF madden the
drinkers" and he thinks that juries should be
left to pass judgment upon the deleterious
qualities of any given liquor. Under this
rule the old query whether lager beer in
toxicates would become more pertinent than
ever, but no sensible jury could doubt that
many of the beverages sold as ''whisky' and
brandy inevitably madden the drinker. If
it was believed that the new party would i'm
prove the character of these compounds, it is
by no means impossible that it might gain
some adherents from the ranks of the Demo-
cracy Gerrit Smith seems to have advocated
this plank for the special purpose of winning
their favor; and although he did not succeed
in having it incorporated in the resolutions,
he embalmed it in his address. 1t is part of
Smiths theory that "a drink that does not
make crazy or madden, but only stupefes, the
Government has nothing to do with, any more
than it has with dinner that stupefes;" and
as lager beer and native wines might be ex-
cluded from his system of prohibition, there
are many voters who would gladly second his
efforts to prevent the sale of strychnine
whisky and drugged brandy.
THE CASE or JIMMY HAGGERTY.
JUST as it seemed that Mr.. Jimmy Haggerty