The Portland daily press., 1880-09-02
Weaver in Portland.


the silence which he was so piteously i'm
plored by the Biddeford committee to keep,
and freed his mind concerning the Alabama
election. The Democratic audience seated
before him was struck aghast, and the
Hancock veterans on the platform
cringed as the lash struck their shoulders.
1t is to be hoped that all Greenbackers
in Portland were within sound of Gen.
Weaver's voice last night and heard his de-
nunciation of the methods praeticed by the
political organization with which their lead
ers have put them in alliance in Maine. He
accused the Southern Democracy of sys-
tematic suppression of free vote and de-
liberate Justification of the count of ballots,
he professed to believe that these fraud.
ulent practices were confined to the South
ern and guiding wing of the Democracy.
But intelligent men who have in mind the
wholesale repeating of Tammany, the gross
election frauds in Cincinnati, the Kentucky
importations from over the Ohio into Indi-
ana, and the shameless miscount in Maine,
know that the Democratic party North is as
unprincipled, and unscrupulous, and knav-
..s .asss. ~ the q nsss. as..ss =. that
acter. tits as insepsible to climate aslit is
to conscientious scruples.
Gen. Weaver assailed Republicans and
Democrats alike, and besought his hearers
to abandon both the old parties and join the
National Greenback organization. What he
did not tell them, but.what every intelligent
man knows, is that the election of Plaisted
and the success. of Fusion in this State
would be everywhere construed as Demo-
cratic success and victory for the Demo-
cratic Presidential ticket And the lesson
to be drawn from his remarks is that the
man who votes the Fusion ticket in this
State does not vote for Weaver and does
vote for Hancock.
Beauty Preserved and knowledge
Increased.
1t was tiresome lesson, and dull pupils
who took up the task. But the Democrats
have mastered it now. Fusion is fraud.
The text was given out to them last year,
and they failed to draw the proper conclu-
sions. 1t was exemplifed and illustrated
by the action of the Tabulators, but they
refused to see it, Now they are convinced.
The sentiment is brought home to them. So
long as Fusion meant fraud upon the Re-
publicans the Democrats looked upon it as
meritorious thing and chose to call it and
tried to believe it, retribution. Now that
Fusion is working their own destruction
they are willing to give it the other, name.
Retribution has come to have most un-
pleasant sound to their ears. Whatever
Butler (not the Democratic recruit but the
Carolinian poet) may say, the pleasure of
being cheated is not so great as the pleas
ure of cheating.
The lesson is hard one, and though it
may not come home to the Democratic
heart it will have some effect on the Demo-
cratic brain. An argument with the force
of battering ram must surely make a
breach even in the thick she'll that hides
that tiny kernel. However lightly the
Democrats hold honesty they must begin to
see that it is the best policy. They thought
the Greenbackers as insincere, as time-serv-
ing, as Office hungry as themselves. They
forgot that many of the Greenbackers were
trained in the Republican party, and taught
the great principles of National supremacy,
of liberty of opinion, of universal suffrage
and of free and honest ballot; and that,
whatever their views upon questions of
finance, they could not.conscientiously serve
under the flag of the reactionists or enlist in
the ranks Of political organization that
aids and promotes and is identified with in
tolerance and oppression. The Democrats
will be wiser hereafter. The added knowl-
edge may not bring happiness, but will bring
a consolation that the mule-kicked boy of
the familiar story could not entertain they
will not only know more but will be just as
handsome as they were before.