Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1882-10-11
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EVENING, OCT. II. 1884,
The Ohio Election.

WEDNESDAY EVENING. OCT. II. lse2.
The Ohio Election.
Ohio reverses her Republican majority
of nearly twenty-five thousand in 1851,
and elects the Democratic ticket by a
decided majority. Ohio was the most
doubtful of tire three great states that,
joining borders stretch from the Atlantic
to the Mississippi, and unfailingly indi-
cate the political state of the nation. In
Ohio the Republican party was
not seriously divided, and not year
ago its hold upon the state seemed to be
firm. Now it has given way, and no
one can be blind to the certain indication
that in New York and Pennsylvania,
with the open differences there manifest
ed in the Republican party, its defeat is
a sure event of the coming month. In
Pennsylvania this has been an obvious
fact, and no result in Ohio could have
affected the public confidence in Dem
ocratic victory here. There may have
been doubts in New York; but they
must be satisfied now.
The question is what the Republican
leaders are going to do under this show
ing. What can they do ? 1t is not easy
to see how any degree of good Judgment
and self-sacriiice could now save the
day. The tide has turned too strongly.
Saitpetre vii! rot stay the progress Of
Republican disintegration. 1t is too
far gone in corruption. There was
a time lately in both Pennsylvania and
New FORK, when good sense and good
temper would have gone far to save the
corrupting body, and would at least
have served to give it decent death and
burial. 1t no ssbt Lave gone down in honor
with cOlors flying and drums beating,
with the respect Of its opponents
and amid the tears nf its friends. Now
it dies and there are none SO poor as to
do it reverence. Its followers are dis
gusted with the folly OF their leaders,
and there are few among them who do
not in their modification feel that their
party has been killed in the home Of its
friends and who care much to rescue it
from its inevitable doom. The leaders
who have ruined cannot save it-how-
ever much they may be ready now, in
the face of the certainty which the Ohio
result brings them of its downfall, to
sink their differences and sacrifice
themselves. 1t is gone beyond redemp.
tion and they are gone with it. In their
own ranks there is joy as we'll as in that
Of their opponents. The Republican
masses, relieved by the certainty of their
party's defeat, find substantial consola
tion in it, because it relieves them from
the incubus of men that no other result
could shake from the hold they had upon
the party.
The defeat is one of the Republican
administration Arthur is now known
to be q failure, as well as party leader
as q statesman. Fishing in the St.
Lawrence while his party was in the
throes of its death agony, he returns to
find his own place in history definitely
fixed. He is written down as an ass
There has teen ii difference of opinion
as to whether his oX-eyed yisage indi
Gated power or weakness. There can be
no question now that he is more of an
OK than man. With great opportuni
ties he has dealt as a low politician
would and low politician he was, and
of the worst metropolitan kind, before he
accidentally received nomination that
went begging at Chicago, and provilen-
TALLY placed him on a pedestal to illus
trate his baseEess TO the world.
Why does the Lord afiiict this country
with the type of men who have lately as
cended to the presidency Grant, to
whom, as Judge Black says, it is
the vainest OF vanities to talk
constitutional law; Hayes, of whom
noble man would he as easily
made as a silk purse out of frogs ear
Arthur, to whom an honest voice, a
truthful look and straightforward
walk is as foreign as to any sneak thief
These are the men the Republican party
has placed in the chief magistracy
Grant ~ the accident of his military
success Hayes by the fraud Of Bob
Mackey and Bill Chandler Arthur by
the bullet of Guiteau. The last effort was
directly providential. It was the down
fall OF the Republican party. 1t was
its casting on: into utter darkness. Tie
Democratic party, threatened at the polls
by military bayonets, cheated Oh. of the
vote of Southern states by villainous
returning boards, defrauded by the par
tisanship Of supreme judges, swindled
by every appliance of federal power,
rises to its feet to-day to overthrow the
men who sought to overthrow the insti-
tutions of the country to strangle it,
and who failed, as Pharoah failed, when
he undertook to slay the hope of the
world. Moses lived. The Democratic
party lives, and it is not irreverential to
say it in this connection, for the hand of
the Lord was in it all.
Let us hope that the Democratic party
will show itsal; worthy of the trust that
is cOnfided to it.
No one Will De greatly surprised ut
Mr.. Beecher's formal severance of his