The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1880-12-30
The Fool In q Mortar.

him."
The Democratic Fool has been brayed
in a mortar pretty constantly for the
last twenty years, and the Scripture is
fulfilled for his foolishness shows no
signs of going out. He was brayed to
an impalpable powder in the years of
the rebellion, but refused to be recon-
structed without additional thumps of
the pestle. When some of the State
elections turned toward the Democrats,
in 1874, he had not sense enough to take
advantage of them. and hold his ground
by decent behavior, but lost by blum
ders all that had been gained by luck;
and when the Presidential contest in
1876 had given him a pretext for rails
ing the cry of fraud against his oppon-
ents, the dreadful pestle came down
upon him again, in the shape of cipher
dispatches, and hammered the poor fool
almost out of existence. Not content
with that experience, he, in the sum-
mer of 1879, crawled into a brand new
mortar in the shape of an extra session
of Congress, for the avowed purpose
of repeating the Federal election
laws, which were intended to
the ballot, and again the pestle
Presidential vetoes and the derision of
the whole country. This year his
friends hoped he had learned wisdom
in that dear school of experience which
is said to be beneficial to pupils who
will learn in no other, and some of them
expected to see him go through the
campaign without repeating the process
of his own creation by making fool of
himself again; but they were disap-
pointed. The Fool asserted himself
continually. He broke forth at Cincin-
natl in the ostentatious promise of q
"solid South;" he blistered his two
hands in cheering when John Kelly
came upon the stage as the represents
tive of all that is corrupt in the politics
of Tammany Hall; he put up for office
the veriest old penny-squeezer to be
found in Indiana, in the hope of catch
ing the votes of laboring men; he
belched forth charges of bribery and
forgery against General Garfield, which
had been exploded for years and we'll
nigh forgotten; he opened his mouth at
Staunton during the canvass, and be-
sought his Virginian audience to remem-
Der what Lee and Stonewall jackson
would do in their places; and, finally.
on the eve of election, as if to exhibit
the utmost stretch and verge of human
idiocy, he invented letter purporting
to be written by a man whose instant
denial anybody but fool would have
expected, and to be addressed to an
imaginary parsonage whose existence
establish. He received the docu-
ment from man with whom
none but fool would have
any dealing; got it printed in a
paper hardly fit even for fool to read;
heard Abe Hewitt tell the publisher
s.twenty times over" that the letter was
genuine; knew that General Rosecrans,
away in California, who was familiar
with Garfield's handwriting from years
of correspondence, held his peace
when he saw the forgery in fac simile;
got an old woman, up in Lynn, to make
foolish affidavit, and then interpolat-
ed initial letters to change the mean
ing to suit his purpose; gave Sam Mo-
rey $50 to come to New York and
swear to four or five lies, and housed
him in the rooms of the Democratic
National Committee while there;
brought Morey to New York again with
Warner, and had them registered at
the Belmont as Asa Clement and Gilman;
sent to Maryland for the scoundrel
O'Brien, and put him on the stand as
Robert Lindsey" TO repeat yarn
that had been stuffed into him by the
National Committees agent; saw his
FOOLS fabric of forgery and perjury
all tumbling about his own ears in
the courtroom, and then carefully
laid himself down in the mortar
with the whole Democratic National
Committee alongside. His co-workers
have been arrested, his witnesses
are in Jail for perjury on their own con-
fession, and the remorseless pestle is
again grinding the great Democratic
Fool into an odorous heap of dust.
When the blows fall Rosecrans winces,
and Hewitt squirms, and Speaker Ram
dali thinks of the impotence of his
gavel against such merciless thumper,
and Barnum rattles like a nutmeg, as
he is. and all the highly respectable
gentlemen who have been sitting in
New York to direct the Democratic
campaign find themselves very uncom-
Portable. But the Fool survives, and is
happy. He feels at home in the NOR
tar. The pestle is his old friend, and
he rather enjoys the gentle agitation it
gives him. He is brayed in a mortar,
but his foolishness will not depart from
him. He will contest the returns from
New York. He smells fraud. and thinks
by this time he ought to know it by its
smell. He is sure there was Republic
an colonization in Brooklyn. He recog-
nizes no mistakes in the past, and will
read jeff Davis book when it is pub
lished, and stick to the principles OF
Lee and jackson. He will do what he
can to bind togetherthe "solid South"
He sees the Democratic party on the
right road to glory, and there is moth
ing to be learned or forgotten.
If not inconsistent with the existence
of the Democratic party Republicans
would like to see it become possessed
of some grains of sense. Honesty they
do not always expect, but perpetual
stupidity they are tired of. 1t is not
pleasant to wage an everlasting contest
against false charges that have no bot
tom to kick, and forgeries that put them
under obligation to pursue their politi-
cal opponents into the criminal courts.
Democratic principles, whatever
| they are, they are ready to discuss;
Democratic platforms they are ready to
sit down on; Democratic statesmen, if
such there be, they are willing to love.
honor, and, if necessary, obey; but the
Democratic Fool they abhor. There
has been too much of him. Let him
retire, and, if Messrs. Barnum, and
Hewitt, and Hampton. and Randall,
and Rosecrans, and the rest, do not OBJ
| ject to such bedfellow. then let him
sleep with his fathers. Chicago Inter-
| Ocean.
D9r The New York Sun, the Tilden
organ, has a remarkable editorial on
the reliability of Democratic majority
in Congress. 1t places no dependence
on any Democratic majority in the next
Senate, and significantly adds: I'm
stable as water, they shall not excel in