Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1880-07-30
SECRETARY ASCHURZ.
His First Speech Oh the Indiana
Stump.
The Weakness .! Con, Haa.ssk's Candidacy,
Does the Country Want a Purely
Soldier President?

speech on the Indiana stump in the
Wigwam at Indianapolis July 21st.
An immense asSemblage listened to
him, and his merciless analysis of the
claims of Gen. Hancock and his party
to the confidence OF the people aroused
it to the highest pitch of enthusia SIN
A GOOD WORD FOR THE ADMINS
TRATIoN.
The country said the Secretary wants
a good government. By good govern
ment he meant one that we'll under
stands the public business, and, under
standing it, trnnsacts it within the
limits of constitutional power, intelli-
gently, honestly and justly. How far
does the government we now have an
swer this definition? He believed, as q
member of the retiring administration,
that the fair-minded men of this coun-
try will admit, and do admit in their
hearts to-day, that, on the whole, the
public business has been conducted by
this administration, as far as was in its
control, honestly, intelligently and
successfully. Many abuses had been
reformed, the public faith had been
maintained, resumption had been &C
complished, and enormous blocks of
the pu bile debt had been funded at low
rates of interest.
LET WELL ENOUGH ALONE.
Now the time for q change in the
personnel of the administration has ar
rived, and, if the present conduct of
affairs is on the whole good, patriotic
and sensible, citizens will see to it that
the change now to come he such as to
give the greatest possible guarantee for
the preservation of all that is good,
and, wherever possible, for an improve
ment on it. They certainly will en-
deavor to prevent such change as
| would threaten q serious deterioration.
The main question which arose, then,
| was-which of the two candidates
could be best depended upon?. 1t
seemed to him that ~the Democratic
party was seriously handicapped by
It's history.
Since the downfall and disappear
ance of the slave power as compact
| political interest, from which the DEM
ocratic party, more than twenty
years ago, derived its morals, its logic,
its political skill and craftsmanship,
that party has been foundering about,
out of logical connection with the
questions of the day; never knowing
the time of day; always looking for
something to turn up, and when some-
thing did turn up, spelling it, lamely
tagging in the rear of events and re-
quirements of the day always behind /;
denouncing+ as impossible things that
were already accomplished facts with
a strange incapacity to understand the
present. and to measure the future,
making itself the recipient and rally
ing point of all dangerous and obstruct-
i've tendencies and elements, and thus
committing blunder after blunder,
which at the moment of their birth, it
uniformly gloried in as great strokes OF
| policy,--from the secession movement
( in 1861, down to the nomination OF
Gen. Hancock in 1880.
is GENERAL HANCOCK FIT?
He honored General Hancock as a
soldier, but the country needed for
President not deserving soldier, but
a man who could be depended upon
successfully to solve the problems OF
craftsmanship before us to preserve
the good things already done, and to
improve upon them. He urged the
people to remember what the burdens
and responsibilities of a President were
1t was not to merely form his cabinet
and consult and agree with them but
it was to meet the tremendous pressure
of outside forces of contending inter.
ests within the ranks ofhis own party
No man who has not witnessed it has
an adequate conception Of the furious
pressure the President is subjected to,
especially during the first period of his
administration and that first period
is apt to determine the character Of
the whole. No cabinet minister can
carry out reform in the branch oil
the public service over which he pre-
sides unless he has the President at his
back, for if the President yields to re-
monstrances and lIrgencies brought to
bear on him against such a reform,
the cabinet minister will find himself
baffied at every step. / speak from ex.
perience when say that most of the
good things that have been done un.
der this administration, whatever mer
it the respective cabinet ministers may