Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-06-19
lancaster frltelligenrer.
SATURDAY EVENING. JUNE 10, 1890.
Thomas f. Bayard.

a lie OIL lnOmaS +. DdydTu NY LU-
ward Spencer, of Maryland, just issued
by the Appleton's, presents him as "a
man upon whom the hopes of very many
are concentrated that he may become in
the near future the leader of the republic
backward from perilous paths to the
better ways of old" This is strictly
true, and those who have this hope are
not all of them Democrats. Mr.. Bayard
enjoys the highest consideration from
political friends and foes. His bearing
has richly earned it. He is a statesman
worthy of thepurest days of the republic,
in which there is no guile. He has
always been a firm and consistent Demo-
crat, but his honest and earnest conduct
has won for him the esteem of every
party. Whatever may be said of the
present result at Cincinnati it is the fact
that the hope of his fellow Democrats is
to see him some day in the presidential
Office. They will be proud of him as a
candidate and they will be proud of his
administration. There may be that in
his record which may make the Cincin-
natl convention deem it prudent to
postpone his nomination to fu-
ture period: although the posi-
BILE prejudice which would be thus
deferred to is not, in our Judgment,
worthy of the sacrifice. II is feared that
the speech made by Senator Bayard in
his early youth, and at the outset of the
war, may he used to his injury among
the voters as basis for charge of dis
loyalty. Better" he thought, g while
deeply deplOring the revolution which
had severed eleven states from the
Union, if a peaceful accommodation was
impossible, that the discontented states
lie allowed to withdraw than run the
awful risk of such war;" But this was
likewise the thought then of many men OF
all parties. 1t is similar in sentiment to
General SCOTS "wayward sisters depart
in peace" speech and to the like utter
ances of Horace Greeley. At its worst
it was an error of judgment. 1t is alb
surd to suppose that the people can be
persuaded that it came to Thomas +.
Bayard through any lack OF patriotism.
They might have been induced to think
SO in the heated, bygone days ; but in the
present calmness of feeling and in the
face of the record Mr.. Bayard has made
for himself, SO admirable in the opinion
of political friend and foe, what Demo
crat can reasonably fear that the people
can be persuaded to distrust him as a
presidential candidate through this ut
terance of long ago. We have no such
fear and confidently believe that it is
baseless.
In Democratic circles Mr.. Bayard has
been criticised because of his assent to
the creation of the abortive criminal
commission; and this too may he set
down with reason as an error of Judg-
ment. But his biographer exhibits the
state of feeling under which Mr.. Bayard
acted, and it furnishes abundant excuse
for, if it does not fully justify his action.
He was filled with apprehension at what
he saw and heard at Washington. More
than half the entire army of the United
States was collected there. Mr.. Bayard S
fear was the country was to be MeNi-
canized and therefore 8 addressed all his
energies to the preparation of remedy
in the form of law" The remedy he
approved was not the remedy which the
occasion demanded, but it is true, as his
biOgrapher states, that he assumed " in
the essential nobility of his nature, that
other men would be actuated by the
same motives as those which compelled
him to do what he did"
Admitting against Mr.. Bayard these
two mistakes in judgment at two periods
of his life wide apart, he is charged with
all that can be said against his fitness for
the executive office. In the supreme
qualifications which he has shown for its
vast responsibilities, these objections will
be held by the voters to be insignificant.
We do believe that there is enough good
sense in the people to make them anxious
to endorse man who has in his daily
walk in their sight so universally gained
their esteem. If Mr.. Seymour is not to
he had Mr.. Bayard may be safely taken.
1t is said that Mr.. Tilden does not favor
his nomination and it is no doubt so.
He is not of the Tilden kind. If Mr..
Tilden had been of his kind he would
now he our president.