The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1880-01-13
Boston Traveller.l
The Country Calls for the Respon-
Sible Authors.

Maine is IN state OF governmental anarchy.
There has been, to be sure, thanks to a degree
of forbearance and self-restraint on the part of
the Republicans worthy of the highest praise,
bIoeashed or violence. But all the anarchy
that a community can know short of breach
of the peace, Maine knows to-day. 1t is
headless State; the seat of the civil Chief
Magistrate is occupied pro tenl by major
general acting under the warrant of the de-
funct Garcelon; q packed Legislature is as
sembled, and, with a stolen majority, is daily
going through the mimicry of legislative pro-
ceedings; while the rightfully elected ma
jority, in defiance of the Supreme Courts
m andate for their instant admission, vainly
appeal alike to the laws of the State and the
conscience of the usurpers for the seats which
belong to them, in trust for the people of
Maine.
The country looks on from day to day and
rubs its eyes in amazement, and, as it sees the
broad burlesque at Augusta go on, it is inevta-
bly, coming to ask the question: Where lies
the primal responsibility? 1t is not the habit
of the English-speaking people to ia nelly ac-
knowledge that gigantic wrong like this is
without remedy. The good government
which Anglo-Saxon people have, in the main,
enjoyed more than those of any other race, is
due to the fact that they have never been will
ing to admit that any gross invasion of their
liberties was without its responsible authors
Having settled who they were to their own sat-
isfaction-and not always justly, perhaps-they
have proceeded forthwith to chastise them
with severity sufficient to make a repetition of
the outrage improbable. From the time when
Charles the First first entered upon his inva-
sion of the popular rights and the privileges of
Parliament, the English peopletnever ceased in
their quest for the responsible authors of their
wrongs. Ship money was levied, and Hamp-'
den sprang to the front as the champion of re-
sistance. The tive members of the Commons
were arrested, and the roar of the enraged peo-
pie was heard in the innermost parlOr of the
palace. Parliament was dissolved and si-
fenced and some men said that Liberty was
finally extinguished." Up to certain point it
seemed that they spoke truly. But when the
people had exhausted their patience in demon
strations against the kings ministers and their
satellites, and found no redress, they turned in
desperation and said: Somebody shall be re-
sponsible we will demand satisfaction from
the throne itself" The head of Charles paid
the final and full penalty.
We are of the same breed of men. Our faith
ers proved that to King George in 1775. They
appealed to the constitutional authorities first,
to the Courts, to the Cabinet and the Council
in London. Their forbearance exhausted, they
arraigned the Crown itself, and destroyed for
ever the authority under which they had EN-
dured such intolerable wrongs.
Once more we have come to supreme test
of this sort. Names State House in the hands
of mob of fraud-seated legislators marks an
other parting of the ways of the people of this
country. They will demand the responsible
authors of this villainy, and they will find
them. Finding them they will exact the
penalty of their crime against popular gov
ernment Upon the National Democracy they
will visit the consequences of this colossal
shame.
Are they not clearly responsible? Garcelon
was Democratic Governor. Under his hand
and seal, as such, this swindle stands perpe-
trated. BY national Democrats, led by the
conscenceless Pillsbury, it is still persisted in.
1t will not do for the national Democratic
leaders to say that they are not parties to the
transaction. 1t is quite true that majority of
| the best known and most respected of them
have pronounced against it. 1t is true that the
| leading national organ of that party, the
| World, has condemned it without stint. 1t is
| also true that the Supreme Courts
scathing rebuke to the conspirators was
| signed, and to his lasting honor, by
| the only Democrat on the bench. 1t is the
| fact, too, that the most eminent men of
| the party in Massachusetts,, the mother State
| of Maine, have unequiyocally set their faces
| and raised their voices, against this scanda-
| lous uSurpation.
By SO much heavier is the reckoning which
| the nation, next November, must exact against
| the Democracy as a national party. 1t stands
before the country, asking for its confidence
| and the helm of its destinies, in self-confessed
| impotence. Its leaders have protested, but its
| followers have paid no heed. They have con-
| demned the steal emphatically, but the thieves
| have not yielded the plunder The inevitable
and logical conclusion is that the leaders of the
| Democracy cannot lead it, The Generalization
| of great party can hardly go further, when
| it's chosen chiefs, the men who, if the party
were in power, would furnish the Cabinet and
| control The. general government, vainly i'm
| plore the rank and file to yield reluctant hom-
| age to decency, law and justice.
| To such leaders, unable to put down political
| piracy within their own party, incapable of
| compelling the slightest regard to their own
| authority, the country is getting ready to say:
"For the acts of their soldiers, commanders
are invariably held responsible. The Maine
| crime was the work of the Democratic rank
and file, and you, their officers, must render an
| account" That responsibility is already fixed,
and they may not hope to evade it, The pos
| session of the Augusta State House will surely
| cost them the forfeiture of the White House
| for four years more. Garcelon has called for
Grant!