The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1880-08-02
The Life of a Respectable Demo
crat.*

The Life of a Respectable Demo
crat.*
"The Life of Thomas F. Bayard'', has
lost, of course, its efficiency as campaign
document for which it was written, but is
instructive and amusing as specimen of
Democratic literature. 1t would be difficult
to explain to person newly arrived in the
land, entirely ignorant of American politics,
but intelligent, unprejudiced and respecta-
ble-we may say the Man in the Moon for
instance,-the personnel, the platform, the
policy of the Democratic party. Its PERSON
pel-the strawberry box of commerce where
the mass of bad berries, small, sour, bitter,
green, decayed, are carefully covered over
by few portly, well developed and fair
specimens; or the prize package business
where for sake of chance at jewelry of du-
bous gold, one purchases and receives a
quantity of poor stationery; or, to bring the
simile home to the mind of the Man in the
Moon, colony of mites in a cheese, each
pursuing his course in total disregard of the
Others and believing that he is the particular
mite that makes right. Its platform drive
of logs when the freshet parts them and the
drivers must jump from rolling log to roll
ing log, separated. colliding, turning in the
stream; it is platform tenuous as tight
rope, and uncertain as moonbeam. Its
policy is-silent until the Greenbackers
have spoken, then many-tongued and unin-
telligible as the convention at the building
of Babel. But when the difficulties of the
Democratic situation are explained, the
Max in the Moon must pity as well as blame
the leaders of that incongruous party. The
party, which includes some good men, exists
for tine profit and pleasure of bad men.
Democrats are sly; they know that to keep
the respectable element of their party in
side its corral, that element must be kept
ignorant of the doings of the party in gen.
eral. Hence the nomination of respecta-
writing of the eulogy of Senator Bayard,
now under review. Senator Bayard has
claims upon set of well-meaning, fastidi-
GUS and leisurely persons who are very Or
namental in the ranks of the Democratic
party, and who are useful on occasions of
dress parade, to stand in front of the less
presentable rank and file of the Falstaffian
company. These gentlemen live in various
parts of the Union and Massachusetts, they
are good citizens, well-dressed, kindly, in
tellectual persons who regret the late un-
pleasantness with our brethren the other
side of Mason and Dixon's arbitrary pencil
mark, hope that by a system of laying bou-
quets on the graves of the gray and blue
alike and letting their left hand know all
about the decoration done by their right
hand, by paying all sorts of contingent bills
for the brethren whom we were so unlucky
as to whip, in the course of their chivalrous
participation in war for which they affirm
the Republicans to be wholly responsible;
by carefully avoiding all reference to the
past; sneering at ''carpet-baggers'' and de-
riding the existence of Ku-Klux, by allow
ing their weathercock to rust, pointing
South-by this system they hope to enter
upon an era when government shall be in
kid-gloved hands, and the aristocracy of the
South and culture of the North be set up
above well-m, aning, but hitherto errone-
Gus nation. 1t is not very often that the
reer of riding two horses at once to amuse
these gentlemen; but once in a while it
must be done, or they will forget all about
politics and write for the Contributors Club
of the Atlantic Monthly, or take their fami-
lies to the seaside and mountains, or enter
into literary discussions with Mr.. Richard
Grant White, and so gently deviate from ac-
tive political pursuits. Senator BAard's
name is in his favor, it recalls chivalrous
traditions; this biography of him represents
him as elegant, well dressed and eloquent.
1t also tells how he saved Delaware from
secession. His recipe was simple, he said
better let discontented States secede ,han
have any war. Delaware having received
Senator Bayard's permission TO go, concluded
to stay. This is the sort of man Democrats
like for President. In 1877 the golden
youth OF Harvard College gave him an
LII. ID. for cause of his Grafton upon I'm
written Law. 1t is not stated whether that
'unwritten law'' is the law of contraries in
the human heart by which Senator Bayard
drove Delaware, and which has been often
applied with great success in directing the
homew ard course of more frankly greedy
and squealing crowd than even the Demo-
Gratis of Delaware. Mr.. Bayard, to quote
from Mr.. Spencer's biography of him
speaks French. He also ''has a delicate
re erve, which has sometimes been mis-
taken for PRIDE Mr.. Bayard took his seat
in the Senate in 1862 His oath was the
usual iron-ciad. His father-says his biog-
that oath and then in stern re-
sentiment at the indignity, resigned. This
seemed hardly worth while-but it is not
with the elder Mr.. Bayard that we are at
present concerned. 1t may be here said
that Mr.. Bayard is strongly in favor of hon.
est money, and he believes in ''parties."
But when some expressions of his are read
his biograDher's praise of him as "great at
definitions will occur as an apt eulogy, and
he is seen to possess the usual Democratic
agility in confusing the meaning of words
and affairs, in apologizing for the wrong,
shutting bis eyes to the right, a. assisting
the powers of darkness and chaos to come
again. 1t is strange proof of the tendency
of the Democratic party, even among It's
more respectable members, tina. such trea-
sonable words as those contained in the
chapter Defense of the South" are openly
printed in campaign document. 1t is an
insult to our dead heroes, an insult to the
wives and mothers that mourn them, an