Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1881-07-12
Most Astonishing.


The establishment that overspread
this whole country at the announcement
that the President had been shot down
by the hand of an assassin, was not less
great than that which spread over this
State at the comments of the Richmond
Wing on the speeches delivered by Gov.
Holiday, Hon. A. M. Kelley and Rev.
Moses D. Hoge, at the mass meeting in
Richmond, on last Tuesday night, to
give expression to the sympathy felt tor
the President and his family in their
sore aff1iction.
These speeches, strange to say, did not
meet with the approval of the organ of
the stalwarts of Virginia, and in its is
sue of next morning. without publish
ing report Of the speeches, character
lied the appropriate and kindly SYM
pathetic words of Holiday as "perfidi-
GUS" ''sophomorical" and ''platitudin-
ous," and Keiley's eloquence as "gas
bag" and specially vents its venom on
Rev. DR.. Hoge in the following choice
(?) terms:-
eff DR.. Hoge will examine the New
Testament he will not find much COM
ism, not Pharisaism. Holiday, the
perfidious, was Sophomorical and plati-
tudinous last night, as usual; Kelley
was an expansive and q soaring gas bag,
as usual but neither of them was so
contemptuous of good faith and common
courtesy as to openly violate the flag of
truce under which all parties met in the
Capitol Square as American citizens to
express their detestation of q great crime
and their sympathy with it's illustrious
victim. That was left for the High
Priest-a true descendant of those who
looked upon the primitive Christians as
pestilent faction and who melted the
cry-"Crucify him! Cruelty him !"
"Or. Hoge's pitiful sociology is no
more Christianity than his Bourbonism
is Democracy. Guiteau himself is buta
Pharisee run mad, as his record shows.
He was inspired to commit foul crime
to save the Republican party! and DIR.
Hoge, in the same spirit, If in less de-
gree, was moved last evening to fire a
shot or two to save the bourbons and
Funders who lyingly call themselves
the Democratic party A blight on
such saviours ~
Had we not read these very words in
the Wing itself we would never have
believed that they had been used by q
Virginia Journal about man of the
well-known nobility of character of DR..
Hoge. Where lies the justification for
such wholesale language Qualification
Can it be found in the earnest patriotic
and thoughtful address of DR.. Hoge p
Or is it found in the perverted brain of
follower of faction, who felt himself
hit when he was, in all probability, OF
aimed at. The Wing seems so pulled up
with the Importance of the faction, it so
blindly follows, that it does not know
there are other and greater factions in
this country, and to arouse its ire it is
only necessary to vibrat the word fac
ton in its auricular appendage, as you
would flaunt red rag in front of an
enraged bun.
If the words of DR.. Hoge Jared dis
ordantly upon the sensitive nerves Of
the Observation-Disclosures party, was
it not because those nerves are not
strung up to the standard of the univer-
sal truths which DR.. Hoge uttered.
That our readers may decide for them
selves and see the utter want of good
sense, good manners and soodtaste dis
played by the Wing in its assault on DR..
Hoge, and which it has persistently per-
sued since, we give below the remarks
of DR.. Hoge, which SO offended the
Wing, and greatly regret that we have
not space to publish the whole of his
address,
In my frequent visits to Europe, on
my return voyages I naturally make
comparisons between my own country
and those have just be en- studying. At
each return I am filed with new adj
miration for the land of my nativity
and love. These heavens, do not bend
over any land so favored by n tural ad-
vantages, so enriched by material re-
sources, as ours. These quiet stars do
not look down upon any continent with
such possibilities as ours and yet, with
all my fond hopes and glowing antici-
pations of the splendid future in store
| for us, am invariably depressed with
one apprehension that all these phi ysi-
cal advantages, all these prospects Of
prosperity and glory, may be Elusive,
because of the failure of our experiment
of self.government. because republican
institutions may be unable to bear the
strain to which they are subjected by
the fanaticism of factions unrestrained
I,xyo fnfi TIC nd r or1vy
temptuous of the authority of law.
Parties may be essential to the health
full life of republican institutions, but
blind, unreasoning factions, incapable
of reason, animated only by prejudice
and hate, these are the forms so full of
menace to constitutional liberty which
now confront us.
Insanity is an awful visitation even
when it maddens a single mind. But
whole communities sometimes become
insane. Fanaticisms have often become
national epidemics, and when faction,
at once malignant and insane, begins to
work in the body politicit is like one of
the hateful maladies which sometimes
infest the physical frame-it fevers and
pollutes the whole structure until 1t at
last breaks out in some incurable ulcer,
premonitory of death.
Such is faction, whose motto never is
principles, not men," nor principles
and men," but men without principles;
loyal not to law or duty, but to money,
to place, to ambition, to power. Zap
plause. That was noble sentiment of
Edmund Burke when he declared that
all just political principles were the
principles of morality practically appli-
ed. Do not our hearts go with him
when we hear him say, Neither do I
now, nor will ever, admit anything
else to he true?" [Applause.
Fellow-citizens, I would impress this
truth upon you: "That which is moral
~ wrong can never be politically right"
Applause.
A Guiteau may say: 81 slay Presi-
dent to secure the unity of party" A
united party is necessary to factional
triumph. But Guiteau had predeces-
sor. Milton, in his picture of Satan.
tells us of speech he made, and he
adds
80 spake the fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish Deeds"
[Applause.