Smyrna times., 1875-09-22
mise eIIUn e OuS.
Senator Bayard at Home.
HIS RECORD, HIS FAMILY AND HIS PAST SERVICES.

HIS RECORD, HIS FAMILY AND HIS PAST SERVICES
The following are extracts from recen
letter of George Alfred Townsend in til,
Cincinnati Commercial:
1t seems very natural to people at dis
tance that Bayard, of Delaware, the in
herltor and adorner of political name
much honored in our politics, should bt
prominently named for the Presidency
TO people who are his neighbors, and famil
lar with his everyday life, the suggestion i.
novel one. He has not inaugerated any
policy OF government, nor been the fore
most champion of any particular set OF
measures. He has not been the familiar
intimate OF any of the great men of the
period. When original measures are to be
canvassed it has not occurred to their
onglnators to call Senator Bayard in and
submit to his dictum. He has beenin pub
lie life but few years comparatively. and
at the outbreak of the war was quite boy,
haranguing a peace meeting on Dover
Green. His notion at that time-for I
heard his speech-was not that the CUES
tlons pending were capable of compromise
but that war on behalf of the Northern
policy would be a crime. He and a Mr..
Whiteley, carousing country Congress
man and stump orator, were the principal
speakers on that occasion. 1t is not often
that public meeting can be brought
together in Delaware ouside of Whining
ton, of more than 200 or 300 persons. I
know that felt a sense of charity that day
Tor the small cluster of rustics and burohers
assembled under the old brick store-house
who listened with awe to young Bayard's
apostrophe to Peace, while meantime the
two immense sections of the country were
arming and forming armies whose numbers
exceeded the whole population of Delaware
by 500 per cent.
THE BAYARD FAMILY
have not been in our time other than con.
sistent reactionaries, preaching the gospel
OF uninquisitive content to a peopIe
already too unambitious and too we'll CON
tented. BY this | mean that the common
run of men in Delaware would rather have
fried chicken than enterprise, and peaches
and cream than the divine afflatus. Iheard
Senator Thomas Bayard deliver an address
at Delaware College, where / had to read
some verses succeeding him, about fouryear
ago, and he spoke very nearly as follows.
The burden of his speech was an attack on
compulsory education, and sounded very
much to me ike an argument in favor of
no education in particular for poor folks.
but a good Princeton education for the
Bayard family. have no copy of this |
speech by me, and do not pretend to quote
its language
Some people are continually saying"
said the young Senator, that Delaware
must have this, and hasn't got that We
are called upon for all sorts of innovations |
upon our good old usages and hereditary |
habits. Let us stick to what we have. We |
are as well off as any people under the sun,
and better off than the communities which |
send these emissaries amongst us on pro-
selytizing errands."
The above is my recollection of the style
d
translation something like the following:
I" Let us frown down general education
and the ferment of thought and spirit, for
that might bring up smarter race of men
than the Bayards, the Saulsburys and
Biggses. Let us keep our whipping.post.
and when we have a criminal among us,
ilOg him and send him over into the next
State, where we are Indifferent whether he
robs or not. Let us frown upon public
school system, and keep our own college,
whose doors we have just opened, after
fourteen years of silence and desertion. by
the aid of agricultural scrip Of the United
States, conferred upon us for the benefit of
our youths by centralized despotism. Let
us have no institutions, not even a peniten-
tiary, and send our murderers to the county
iaiIs, where they may whittle out miniatures
of the whipping-post and pillory; to sell to |
visitors from Philadelphia, for we have at |
least one institution, the hereditary Bayard |
family, which God long preserver'
THOMAS =. BAYARD WAS BORN
into position by the peculiar adaptation of |
the Constitution of Delaware to support a |
Conservative family dynasty. That is, the
State Legislature is distributed between the |
counties without regard to the number of
their voters, and two of these counties,
being slave-hoIding by taxation and sur
roundings, We're sure to be pro-slavery and
go with the Bayards. The third and the
upper county contains the populous city of
Wilmington, which is largely settled by
Quakers, Germans and Pennsylyanians,