Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1881-04-06
Eallrastcc E,,tel!:Ge11rer.
WEDNESDAY EVENING. APRIL 9. 1881.
The virginia Straddle.

The Senate debate is doing the Demo
cratic party great good in exposing what
was wittily called by Senator Morgan
the Riddlebargain, and putting the just
Odium of it upon the Republican lead
ers. Senator Bayard uncovered a main
object of the insistance of that party
upon installing Mahone's Virginia bri-
gade in the Senate Offices, when he said
that it was to fOrtify him for his contest
in the fall election in Virginia, in which
a union of the former Malone and Re-
publican parties is proposed for the pur-
pose of e!ecting a governor and a Legis-
lature that will choose a United States
senator. The continued debate in the
Senate over the Riddlebargain'' has
the effect Of sadly spelling the prospect
of the success of this alliance. Malone
has the difficult feat to perform uf re-
tanning his Democratic votes in Virginia
after he has joined the Republican party.
Heretofore he has stOutly maintained
that he was Democrat, and has even
so declared since he has entered the Sen
ate and voted with the Republican side.
But the Virginia Democrats who have
followed him rs Democrat can lie de-
ceived no longer, after they see the alli-
ance he has made and read all that is
said about it by the Democratic sena-
tors. 1t is quite impossible to conceive
that any Virginia Democrat can regard
Malone as a Democrat when the unani-
nous opinion of the Democratic senators
and the Democratic newspapers outside
There are some nlen in the state,
heretofore democrats in good repute,
who cling to Malone but they are men
vino have been his lieutenants in the
Readjuster movement and who have
made up their minds to follow him into
the Republican camp, lured on by the
hope of spoil and position. They regard
their political fortunes as borne on the
beat OF which Malone was the captain,
and rather than lose the good things
with which they hope il is destined to he
loaded they will sail with it out of the
Democratic fleet. We confess to great
surprise ut the determination of some of
these men, but the majority of them are
just such camp-follOwers and carriOn
birds us would naturally he in such Il
movement. Fowler, of the Bristol
News, is one of the better sort of men
whose course surprises US; John S. Wise
i, of the KIND who does not.
Bu: while Malone takes most of the
leaders of the 'Readjusters' with him, it
is otherwise, We believe, with the rank
and file. There are very good men who
always get wrolg on financial question.
aaa they are strangely plenty. 1t is one
of the most remarkable things in nature,
indeed, that men who are otherwise sen-
sible and honest, are rs feeble minded as
babes in considering 4 money question.
Now, to anyone out OF Il lunatic asylum,
it is clear hat if it is right and honest
for an individual to pay lis debts if he
has property enough to pay them with,
it is just as right and proper for that in
dividual'S state TO pay its debt if it is
worth the money. But while every Vir-
ginian believes that Virginia is worth
her debt, Il hundred OF thousand times
over, and that every Virginia citizen
should scrnpulously pay what he owes,
there are many thousands OF them vino
declare that the state should repudiate its
debt in whole or in part.
Clearly there is no use in arguing
with such people about question of
debt or finance. Still they are good,
sane citizens ana Democrats they are not
stupid in everything, as Malone would
have them and seems to think them.
They know /. Democrat from Republi-
can: as regulating Democrat, Ma
hone was Of their kind as repudiat-
ing Republican they will have none of
him. And here there is the stumbling
block to the effective union of his party
with the Republican in his state. He
can take along all Of his officers: but the
privates will fall out of his ranks. The
Senate officers won't go around to buy
all the voters he needs and he has no
other way to get Democrats, dyed in the
wool, to vote the Republican ticket. His
little scheme comes to grief, and the lit
Tie leader with it, when he and they run
across in their party such unpromising
material in the g Readjuster" ranks for
Republican conversion AS is found in
men of whom Mr.. T. II. Murphy is a
sample, who writes as follows, on March
g, to the chairman of the 6 ',Readjuster"
committee of Rockingham county in re-
ply to notice that he had been APP
pointed committeeman OF the party
While have been aud am still a Read
juster. have always been a Democrat,
and when find the recognized leader of
the REIMBURSEMENT party, Gen. Malone. a
man whom | have followed almost blindly.
deserting the Democratic party and voting
with the Radical party on party questions
in the Senate of the United States /; when
find the leaders Of the July electoral
ticket and its organs last fall, openly en-
JOrsing NahOne's course, and cOa!escing |
with the Radical party, and one of these |
leaders and IN electOr-at-largs on the |
July electoral ticket, accepting nomi:
nation of Radical caucus; when find |
the Radical organs everywhere applauding
Mahone's dcseytiOn and treachery when |
/ find that rcadiustment has been prosti
tuted into a scramble for Office, and that it |
means now AN alliance with Radicalism
and an effort to radicalize the state, 1 am |
forced to declare as Democrat will have |
nothing to do with tho Readjuster-R -Radi- |
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