Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1884-08-29
Foreign Born Citizens.
Blaine's Treatment Of Them
When Secretary of State.
Denying the Rights of Citizen
ship to an Hon0rably Dis
charged Sailor.
A Pitiable Excuse for Non-action.
Waiting Three Months Before Even
Examining FOrster's Coercion Bill

Waiting Three Months Before Ever
Examining Forster's Coercion Bill
NEW YORK, Aug. 26-The Herald
publishes long letter from the pei
of VIM. H. Hurlbert, the publicist
1t is the first of tnree letters to ap
pear in the Herald and reviewing il
detail Mr.. Baine as Secretary ot
State. The letter published after {
general review of the subject, treat:
of the cases of Michael p. BoytoE
and Joseph P. Walsh. The No
ISweeney case and others will be treta.
ed in the future letters. Some ex
cerpts of this first letter are well worth
a careful reading at this time. Mr.
Hubert says: "When the republic
can presidential convention at Chr
cago accepted and Indorsed the sound
democratic doctrine that the protec
ton due to American citizens by birth
must be assured in all parts of the
world to American citizens by natur.
alization, the convention must surely
have thought itself beyond all danger
of the presidential nomination which
actually overlook it. The danger
would certainly have been averted.
naust suppose, if some American citi-
zen of Irish birth had called upon the
partisans cf Mr.. Blaine in the con,
vention to explain how it came to
pass that American citizens, thrown
into Irish prisons at the very moment
when Mr.. Blaine was taking his seat
as secretary of state in 1881, were left
by the government at Washington to
languish in those prisons, not only
without trial, but without eXamina-
lion, for month after mouth,
during the whole of Mr. Blaines term
of office, and how 1t came to
pass that when Mr.. Frelinghuysen, in
1882, set about doing in earnest what
Mr. Blaine had most ignobly and alb
surdly failed throughout 1881 to do, he
found it necessary to call in the
wcighty though unofficial influence at
London of a predecessor of Governor
Cleveland, residing not a hundred
miles from Stuyvesant square, in New
York, in order to satisfy the British
cabinet that Mr. Blaine had untruly
represented the emotions and purposes
of the American people in regard to
! their fellow citizens imprisoned in
Ireland, and in order to convince the
| British cabinet that unless those
| American citizens SO imprisoned were
speedily brought to trial or speedily
released the good relations between
| the two governments would be sorely
strained"
BI AINE FACE TO FACF. WITH IRELAND.
Mr. Blaine took Office on the 5th of
March, 1881. Three days before, on
the I'd of March, civil government had
come to an end in Ireland with the
royal assent, that day given, to Mr..
FOrsterS coercion bill.
NO INTEREST.
Whether the condition Of Ireland
in the winter Of 1SS0-S1 was such as
to excuse the sudden conversion of a
policy of Cancellation and justice into
policy of coercion and despotlSm
was question which SHOULD surely
have interested a public man like Mr..
Mr.. Blaine living in a country which
numbers millions of lrishmen among
its citizens.
BLAINE's oRGAN-THE TRIBUNE.
Possibly Mr.. Blaine may have taken
/ a different view of the Coercion bill
and of the necessity" for it. He may
have agreed about it with an able
American journal, always friendly tc
him, the New York Tribune. An article
taken from which paper | find cted
by the British Minister at Washing
ton in an Official despatch as, "on the
whole, satisfactory" in tone. He may
have believed with the Tribune that
the British government vas "strug.
CLING hand over hand with a formid
able conspiracy which has been
directly promoted by the Irish citizens
of the United States"
HIS SOLEMN DUTY.
But whatever Mr.. Blaine may have
thought Of Mr.. Gladstone's coercion
policy, as an American observer of
British affairs it was unquestiorably
his solemn duty as secretary of state
of the United States, taking office on
the 5th of March, 1881, to lose no time
in acquainting himself minutely with
the terms and the force of coercion
act, made law on the I'd of March,
1881, which must instantly and inevi
tably affect numbers of American cit
liens sojourning in Ireland, and ex
posed to suffer in their liberties and
their rights from the operation of it.
THE SOLEMN DUTY MR.. BLAINE DID
NOT DO.
As | shall show, it is of record un-
der his own hand, that he had not Sc
much as thought it worth his while
to see copy of this coercion act three
months after it went into effect, three
months after many persons claiming
te be American citizens had been ar
rested and imprisoned under it, and
two months after his official attention
had been called by the American min
lister at London, in an elaborate dis
patch, to the arrest under this act of
a man of Irish birth, claiming Amer
lean citizenship, who had served in
the United States during the civil war,
who had lived and voted as a citizen
in New York, and who had offered to
Mr.. Lowell his passport as an Ameri-
can citizen, granted by Secretary Sew
ard, In support of his claim.
THE POLICY OF BLUNDERs.
desire 10 fix the attention of your
readers upon this first aRd fatal fail
ure of Mr.. Blaine to perform a duty,
not only obvious, but instant, urgent
and imperative 1t affords a key to
his whole subsequent career In the
State Department; a career so full,
not merely of blunders in policy, but
of highty and frivolous Indifference
to the intelligent conduct of affairs
so full. in short, Of .'sins. Regligences
and ignorances" as entirely to justify
the trouble which the friends OF Pre-
sident Arthur and Senator Edmunds
and ex-Secretary Fish took, though
unfortunately In vain, to make his
nomination at Chicago impossible.
The passage of Mr.. Forster's Co
ercion bill, March 2, 1881, rang a bell
in the Department of State at Wash
ington three days afterward. 1t
served notice on the Department of
State that the liberty and the rights of
every American citizen of Irish birth
travelling or sojourning In Ireland
had been put at the mercy nominally
OF Earl. Cowper, the Lord Lieutenant
| of Ireland. who was armed by it with
1 5..,,,+1, ,.,rarS b7I. really af the