Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-04-19
BLAINE.

P!ucking Every Feather From His Plume.
Mary Clemmer in the New York Independent.
No force less than my conscience and my
love for my country could make me write
of public men, even in the modified sen Sc
in which now present them to the peo-
pie. Were my inclination different, l
could pluck Mr.. Blaine's record till he
would not have one political feather left
to wave triumphantly in the crest Of "the
plumed knight
l make but one issue with you, Lade-
pendent. In defending Mr. Blaine's facil-
ity for making money out of government
contracts during the war, you remark
" He may have made money in those days
in some Of those acays;: but that is not ne
cessarily discredit to him. Then you
add: "A. 7. Stewart made twenty-five
millions during the war, largely out Of
government contracts, and no one thinks
this firm acted wrong or unwisely.
A. Il. Stewart, from the beg inning to the
end Of his career, was man of business.
He never set himself up as a patriot. He
never assumed to be a statesman. He never
waved the baton of u ''Stalwart' in the
face of the administration. He never shed
crocodile tears over the negro. He never
threatened slaughter and destruction to
lllC lCUCI. L lOl1 III oC W.
last, he was content to seem what he was
"a man with monstrous faculty for MAX
ing money by trade When Grant wished
him to be the Secretary of the Treasury,
he wanted the honor; but his connection
with commerce and finances were such the
people rebelled, and for once Grant sue
cumbed to the will of tho people, and the
canny millionaire, to his great personal
credit, withdrew. If few loved him, no
one despised him. True to the law OF his
life, he never masIucraded in skin not
his own :; but died, as he lived, the king of
money getting Scotchmen.
Had he been politician, who from the
first used his political power as lever to
lift himself to fortune had he come to
Washington in the war, and used pat in
the war and navy department to obtain
him fat contracts had he used his political
Office and power to control vast corpora
tions in his own mOneyed interests instead
of building them up through the legiti-
mate channels of trade, he would have
been-sOmebody else, not A. Il. Stewart.
Save in success, attained by widely differ
ent means and modes, there is no parallel
between the two men.
Mr.. Blaine is of imposing height and
burly in form. His hair is nearly white
and thin on top, and his beard is not
heavy. He has fair but not imposing
head. Large at the base, it does not
tower into dome of thought, and his
perceptive and emotional faculties over
power those of reason. His eyes, his
finest feature, are very fine, though their
beauty is impaired by the water-sacs filling
above and below them. His nose is his
worst feature-fat, sensual "Nosey
Blaine' 4 tiattering paragraph says he
was called at school, adding: ''1t was
a nose for Napoleon" No. 1t was
the eagles bcak, like Wellington 's-the
nose of bone, not the nose of fat-that
commanded the admiration of Bonaparte.
Mr.. Blaine's mouth is pleasant rather than
strOng-the mouth of a humOred child,
that could smile or pout or sulk for what
it wants and what it wants it wants and
intends to get. A well-fed, well-dressed,
heavy man of the world, on whose face
passion rather than time has set its heavy
seal. This is "the plumed knight whom
l see a woman has already addressed as
"Jamie' in a campaign poem. A man
who, despite Il brilliant brain and acute
intelligence, is distinctly man of desire,
of impulse. of emotion, springing from a
central root of sclf-love, that never for a
moment lets him forget what he desires
and wills to have for himself. The keen
est and most self-loving of politicians, he
never was and never could be a patriot.