The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-10-22
Democratic Contempt for the Peo

The biennial session amendment was de-
feated in Connecticut, it seems. by the breed
of small politicians which infeSt that State,
and who realized that its success would leave
them with their occupation gone. Connectl-
cut will know better next time.-LeUaston
Gazette.
The biennial session amendment was de-
feated in Connecticut by majority larger
than the entire vote cast in its favor The
vast majority of the voters of Connecticut
may be small politicians, but it is evident
that they did not desire biennial sessions
and so rejected them. 1t was their affair,
and they decided it in accordance with their
convictions and their supposed interests, as
they had right to do. Let us hope that
the people of Connecticut are politicians
They cannot all be large ones. Let us b
thankful they are politicians even in a small
way, that they take an intelligent interest
in the conduct of government, are not too
indolent or too Indifferent to go to the polls
once year, cling to the long-tried and we'll
proved plan Of holding their stewards to
strict accountability and requiring of them
an annual surrender of their trusts. In
government as in business, short accounts
and speedy. settlements are for the best in
terests of all. The people of Maine may
profit by the example of the politicians of
Connecticut.
1t is not, however, with the purpose of
advo eating annual sessions that the PRESS
takes the Gazette paragraph as text. That
question is settled in Maine We
take the paragraph as an illustration of
the usual Democratic method of regarding
defeats. That party has been knocked out
of time in many fights, and has never yet
been able to find out what hit it. 1t has
attributed its reverses to ''fanaticism'' to
''the machine" to ''corruption"-never to
its own bad conduct nor to the convictions
of the people. 1t upheld slavery and was
defeated, and to this day it is unable to
bring itself to see that it affronted the moral
sense of the people. 1t still believes that
bigotry and sentimentalism were the forces
that worked its overthrow. 1t opposed the
prosecution of the war and was defeated.
And it has not discovered that its own un-
patriotic and disloyal course provoked its re-
buke by the people. 1t thinks now that
sectionalism was its undoing. Since the
war it has been defeated again and again,
but it will not confess, because it cannot see,
that its defeats have come about by the
fact that the people are not in sympathy
with its aims and methods. 1t believes that
''the machine" and corruption have done
it harm. 1t is unable to perceive that the
people look beyond ''machines" to the OBJ
iects those engines are designed to accom-
plish, and that they profoundly averse to
the purposes the Democratic machine is
framed to promote.
1t is now as it ever has been. In this lat
est contest it is unable to see that it has
been rejected because the people favor an
honest currency, and National sovereignty,
and the preservation of the prerogatives of
each department of the Government. 1t can
only account for its defeat by corruption"
1t has no faith in the people, no confidence
in their honesty or their judgment. So great
is it's contempt and distrust of them that it
loudly asserts that the majority of voters
have been bribed. That is the only way in
which it can account for the declaration of
the people for an honest dollar and National
suprem acy. In effect it declares that men
must be induced by bribes to become honest
and patriotic. That is the light in which it
looks at the American people. And then it
is stupid enough to wonder why the people
whom it does not trust should not trusr it.