The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1880-06-12
HOW GRANT WAS BEATEN.

| II Is barely possible IL maue III uihc'ehSe
in the outcome, but there was not particle of
reason or justice in the way in which Grant
was tricked out Of eighteen of the Illinois
delegates in the recent Chicago convention.
1t is true, the Republican National Committee
IN their call of the convention SAID that each
congressional district should be entitled to
two delegates, but it gave no intimation as to
how those delegates should be chosen-certain.
| " it gave no intimation that congressional
district conventions should be held to appoint
them, or that the delegates from each district
10 a state convention should select them. The
latter mode, which the an.i-Grant part of the
Chicago convention decided TO be the correct
one, was especially absurd and unreasonable.
The delegates to the state convention consti-
tuted one body, and by every parliamentary
law or usage ever heard of among civilized ma
tions Its action in all matters was subject to
the control of the majority of It's members.
That convention was called as had been the
unvarying custom of the republican party
of this state since 1t came into existence, to APP
point the delegates to the national convention,
and it did so IN strict conformity to the prece-
dents OF the party and parliamentary law and
usage. But the Chicago convention set aside
those prccedents, laws and usages, and made
the extraordinary decision that the convention
ought 20 have divided itself up into 10 little
conventions, each to act independently OF the
other and of the whole as one body, and yet
that the whole body must certify to the action
Of each separate body about whose separate
proceedings it could know nothing. Such ac-
ton palpably was purely arbitrary, without
precedent in the history of national conven-
tloas of the republican or any other party in
this country, and in violation of every known
parliamentary law or usage. twas simply an
outrage on the part of small antiGrant ma
jority IN the convention, boldly and shameful
ly perpetrated, with the sole object to make
that anti-Grant majority so large as to be irwin
chile. The like outrageous action, to smaller
extent was repeated in regard to the delega
tons from two or three other states.
The convention, on the score OF principle,
was equally off IN the matter of rejecting the
unit rule, though it could plead in defence
sort of precedent in the case of the Cincln-
natl convention four years ago, where the rule
was ignored, though not formally set aside.
The principle upon which the rule rests is that
the national nominating convention is design
ed to be modelled after the electoral college.
THE number of its membership is regulated
by the number of electors to which each state
lis entitled, and as each state elects its own
electoral ticket as a whole, SO, IN principle,
each state ought to select its delegation to the
national convention as a whole. The vote
that elects the president Is not the popular
vote. The object of the party in its nomin-
lating convention is therefore to obtain the cleo
toral, not the popular majority for its candi-
dates, and this depends upon the vote of each
state as unit, and not in accordance with its
popular vote or representation in congress.
The democratic party held national nominal
ing conventions many years before the repub-
lican party was born and the latter party, IN
It's national conventions, pretends tot follow the
model set by the older party; but the unit rule,
when insisted upon by any state, was never
questioned IN any democratic national conven-
|tion.
Thus, both in the matter of ruling that the
delegates to the national convention should be
selected by single districts and not by state
conventions and in rejecting the unit rule, the
Chicago convention, in Its preliminary condi-
ton OF an unorganized mob, arbitrarily and
forcibly, without forewarning and without a
single authoritative precedent to justify it IN
either case, elected enough members to reduce
the fairly and legally elected majority in favor
of Grant to hopeless minority and thus
cheated him out of the nomination. Though
the party as a body may be sufficiently under
the party whip to submit to the outrage, yet 1t
nas an outrage, and in all Its elements dis.
graceful and beastly one.