The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1870-10-08
More Lickspitleism.

| coming involved in those bitter and indecen,
personalities that too often disgrace such q
canvass. There are grave political issues in
volved. The west is being robbed by I. par
tial, sectional and hideously unjust tariff, and
the internal revenue system, as at present adj.
justed, discriminates against the west with a
partiality scarcely less odious and unjust. En-
travagance and corruption, peculation and
ring legislation, squandering the public mon
eys and public lands on private monopolies
that have made the votes of congressman as
merchantable an article as fancy stocks in
Wall street,-these and hundred other mon
strOus evils of the same kind that could be
named as prevailing every department of our
public service, are the things we had hoped
the people would be permitted to talk about
instead ofithe contest degenerating INTO de-
grading personal squabble.
1t seems, however, to suit the purpose of
the opponents of Mr.. Julius Avery better to
keep those matters of public concern out Of
view, and to make the contest one of low per.
sonal abuse. In this degrading business, Mr..
Cooks most humble and obsequious servant,
Mr.. Postmaster Webster, of the LaSale Press
leads off. The Wilmington Lndepenaent, anoth-
er of those presses of the district which Mr. Cor
win says have been " subsidized by congress
ional patronage" follows suit; the Morris
Adrertiser wallows in the same dirty pool, and
now comes the Pontiac Sentinel, printed out
side of the district, but by another dog who
wears masters collar and joins in the same
howl
The howl Of those whelps is, first, that Mr..
Avery, at the time it was issued, used pretty
strong expletives in reference to the emanci-
patton proclamation, denouncing it as a
usurpation of power by the executive not war
rantcd by the constitution and secondly, that
Mr.. Avery's "war record consists in wish,
very decidedly expressed, that the whole uni
velsall Yankee nation might descend into that
region which orthodox writers have designa-
ted as the place prepared for the finally i'm
penitent." (This is the elegant language of
the Pontiac Sentine1) Were these charges
true In the spirit intended in heavens name
what have they to do with the contest this
fall? Suppose Mr.. Avery did at the time re-
gard the emancipation proclamation as q
usurpation: So did Mr.. Lincoln himself and
he made the broad confession that the act was
outside of the constitution. Does Mr. Avery
propose to repeal the proclamation, and if re-
peaed, what effect could it have? And sec.
ondly, suppose Mr.. Avery dld anathematise
the universal yankee nation "a faIsehood
out of whole cloth for bringing on the war,
it is equally false that he opposed the prosecu-
ton of the war IN any of its stages on the con-
trary, 1t is we'll known fact which these
lickspittles of Mr.. Cook carefully suppress,
that Mr.. Avery made the first speech that was
made in Ottawa urging enlstmen.s in the ar
my to crush the rebellion.
Instead of harping on these miserable char
ges, which were fully met and rcfuted two
years ago when Mr.. Avery was the candidate
for senator in this district, permit us to sue-
gest to Mr.. Cooks spaniels that they had bet
ter employ themselves in telling US what Mr..
Cook has done to relieve the country from its
present enormous expenditures and grinding
taxation; what to relieve the country from
paying S75,0o0,00O year to enrich the Penn
sylvania iron masters or the $lj0,0O0, 900 q
year to enrich the New England cotton lords:
or in answering the grave charges OF that hon
est republican, A. j. Grover, Esq, in regard
to Mr.. Cooks voting the public lands and
public money to corrupt railroad rings and
spectators. Or, what concerns them more
Immediately, let them answer the charges of
Mr. Corwin against their master, that "the
federal office. holders of this district, to the
neglect Of their official duties, gave themselves
to the work of forcing the nomination of their
MASTER" and that they FUSED money with Il
lavish hand to buy votes and influence dele
gates &c. &c.
These are matters of public concern and of
legitimate newspaper inquiry and discussions
and they affect their master very closely and
doubtless unpleasanty. A manly and dgni-
fed discussion of points like these is what the
voters of this distric, anxiously crave, and it
is an abuse and degradation of the Office of
the public press to ignore such weightier mat.
tiers and to descend to low miserable living
and personal abuse.
The ticket nominated by the County Ten
percncc Convention at La Sale last week is as