The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1880-01-27

stroy, the right to use the torch of the incen-
diary and the club of the ruffian, the right,
in short, to do wrong. Their objects are to
be attained, not by party organization and
associated public effort and free discussion
and the education of opinion according to
the manner of free States, but by the meth
DDS of the conspirator, by the agency of Sc
cret societies, bound by grip and password,
sworn to implicit obedience, governed by
irresponsible and desperate men, acknowl-
edsing neither constitution nor statute law,
neither executive authority nor judicial de-
cision, ana holding themselves responsible
only to the chiefs of their League-chieis
for the most part needy aid desperate ad-
venturers who hold prosperous times to be
bad times and find their opportunity in tGr-
moil and anarchy.
It is thes. lawless irresponsible, desperate
organizations, ncrved by the plunder which
gives courage to the adventurer and the ha-
tired which gives zeal to the fanatic, that
menace the peace of the State to-day
Against the threats and assaults of the men
who held laws and vested rights and ancient
usage i'll contempt, whose war is avowedly
against property and the privileges and con-
dtions of society itself, who hesitate at no
means, however violent, or vile, to accom-
plish their destructive ends, the State is
guarding and protecting itself to-day,-and
it has taken alarm none too quickly. The
PRESS would not for a moment assume, for
it does not believe, that the mass of the op-
position to the Republican party in Maine is
largely concerned with the circles of the b
p L., or that many of the members of the
Fusion so-called Legislature are privy to the
plot to overthrow the legal government and
seize the State Though Joseph Smith, by
the act of appointing Blood member Of his
alleged staff, has gone far toward committing
his supporters to the declared principles of
these incendiary leagues, and toward invit-
ing their active aid and sanctioning their
dangerous designs. The majority of the
Fusionists are too honest and patriotic for
that. But that there is a body of desperate,
unscrupulous men, organized to do these
very things, we cannot, in the light of recent
developments, doubt. These men rely for
support upon the admiration which always
follows a daring act, and the heedlessness
and unscrupulousness of party passion and
the weak acquiescence of party organizations
in violent measures in times of high turmoil
and strife. Heretofore, they say, the Fusion
lists, at first reca|citrant, have come up, al
most as one man, to the defense of the most
arbitrary measures and the baldest usurpa-
tions; and hereafter, they reason, the party
can as readily be brought up to sustain
them and their misdeeds. The unwise
course of the Fusionists gives only too
much color to this assumption; and though
it is noe to be believed that the revolution
ary acts of the disciples of 'Brick'' Pome-
roy can receive any considerable support in
Maine, the silence of Democrats and Green
hackers at this time affords them courage
and deludes them with the hope of immu-
nifty. That silence is not only unwise and
unpatriotc; it is criminal. 1t has become
the duty of all honest and well-meaniI G
citizens to recognize, without distinction Of
party, the legally constituted and lawfully
organized government of the State, and to
support it against the enemies who seek its
overthrow and the subversion of the State
itself.