Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-04-16

cial experts. As long as the new funding
scheme prospers, however, perhaps it will
not matter much what is said of it by those
who do not understand their own theories
well enough to know when they are being
traversed.
&
WHAT DENIS KEARNEY HAS TO SAY.
We publish this morning the account of
an interview with Denis Kearney, which
will be found very interesting reading.
The agitator has given our reporter ex-
ceedingly frank and outspoken statements
in regard to the inside history of the New
Constitution party. He is of course re-
sponsible for his own story, and if those
concerning whose actions he makes uncom-
plimentary assertions have any denials
to make, there is nothing to hinder them.
1t will be seen that Kearney represents the
New Constitution movement to have been
originated and guided by men who had
the most selfish and sinister ends in view.
He states that some of those men I'M
folded their schemes to him, desiring to
secure his cooperation. He declares
that they offered him very large sums
to form an alliance with them. He
alleges that their plan involved the
seizure of the State Government and
the Judiciary, and the bringing of heavy
suits in various directions against wealthy
firms and corporations, with the express
and sole object of securing an enormous
blackmail. The plot sketched by the Sand
Lot leader is certainly most audacious
and iniquitous one, and if it be not true as
he states it, the public will have to give
him credit for an uncommonly fertile and
adroit imagination. This, however, is
not the first time it has been alleged that
kearney was offered large amounts to put
himself under the control of others. In
fact it has been frequently asserted that he
had been bought, though the fact of his
present poverty would appear to refute
any SLCi Siial &C. 10 Lo oOuOb
that when his movement was at its
zenith he was in position to know
more of the inside workings of the
homogeneous elements which were for
the moment joined with him, than any
other man in the State, and it is equally
certain that there was period when he
really did exercise more political influence
than any other partisan leader. There is
undoubtedly very strange conjunction of
qualities in Kearney. Though he appears
often to be half.knave, half-fool, it is I'M.
deniable that he has resolutely refused to
avail himself of his opportunities to ac-
quire riches for himself. He might have
obtained almost any office he had asked
for. He might have put his friends into
power and made them pay him for it. He
might have coined his opportunities in a
dozen ways. But instead of following the
almost invariable custom of demagogues,
and plundering the people afterhe had de-
ceived them, he has gone back to his dray
as poor as when he left it,
His views of past events have the at
traction of novelty, and even his most
astonishing statements are at least plausi.
bic. 1t might have been supposed that
this cratic individual would have flung
himself into the new Anti Monopoly
League with ardor, but contrary to ex-
pectation he discusses the movement with
unconcealed mistrust and suspicion,
alleging that the character OF its project
ors renders him skeptical as to its results.
1t would seem indeed as though he gagged
the new movement by the old one, and as
though he suspected in Black, Chittenden
& Co. designs as antagonistic to the general
welfare as those which he says he detected
in the leaders of the Honorable Blk
party. Kearney is not the man to meas
ure his language, and his expressions are
neither refined nor fastidious. He
has liking for calling a spade
a spade, and he has too great tendency
towards epithets. But for all his defects
his narrative is both interesting and con-
nected, and it may open the eyes of many
innocent would-be reformers as to the
methods which too generally underlie the
most convulsive and hysterical agitation
so denominated. Kearney's experience of
political and other human nature has evi.
IDENTIFY made him cynical, and if half what
he says be true, this is not to be wondered
at. For certainly he pictures nearly all
the most blatant friends of the people"
as hopeless scoundrels, whose every act
was inspired by rapacity and selfish greed,
and who only sought power that they
might abuse it, and the suffrages of the
people that they might indulge their con-
scienceless avarice with impunity. 1t
is seldom that the "true inwardness OF
a sham reform movement has been
displayed in SO perfectly candid
manner as in this instance, and
whatever else the publication does it ought
to make sensible men cautious how they
join new parties concerning the real OBJ
iects of which they know nothing, and
whose external professions consist merely
in such glittering gensralities as are avail
able by any rogue and hypocrite who
chooses to employ them as DISCUSSES. Nor,
after reading his account of the New Con-
stitution conspiracy, will the reader be sur
prised that the man who had this expert
ence should have learned to suspect black
mailing plots in every new movement and
in every new movement directed
against corporate capital. Kearney knows
how it is himself, and therefore he dis
trusss Jere Black and Chittenden. II his