Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1884-06-13
THE REPUBLICAN, PLATFORM.

The platform which the Republican party
made at its recent convention in Chicago is
nething more or less than sham and fraud
Candid journalism will justify such analysis
of its sections as will elicit their real purpose
and meaning. And If the conclusion fol-
lows that they or any of them are pretentious
and hypocritcal the fault will be attributed
to the convention that proclaimed them.
The entire instrument is honey -combed
with hypocracy. The promise in the first
paragraph that the Republican party will
respond to the demands of the country in
the work of progress and reform is but
promise like that Of the drunken man to
mend his ways, TO be broken on the first
temptation. After years of national power
that has permitted the consolidation of the
trade and commerce of the country in a few
syndicates and the building up of monopo-
lies SO fast that their power is greater than
that of State governments, and the most in.
fluential factor in national administration it
is the sublimity of impudence for the Repub.
lican party TO come now and assert that if
again trusted it will restore the national
authority in the regulation and control Of
internal commerce. II it favors legislation
that shall present unjust discrimination
and excessive charges of transportation"
why in twenty years has it not secured the
required legislation and prevented the dis.
elimination and excessive charges, the ex-
istence Of which it acknowledges. The
promise is not made TO be executed and
the corporations will SO understand it. They
will judge the Republican party on its record;
not on its platform, and as heretofore wei
come it as their good and faithful servant.
The tariff plank of Republican platforms
has for sixteen years been rotten thing,
and its rottenness has been its chief COM
mendation TO the successive conventions
adopting it. The Chicago convention of
1884 has outdone its predecessors in the
amount of qualification on the tariff crowd
ed into that plank of the platform
That duties were ever imposed 10 protect
the rights and wages of the laborer in con-
tradstinction Of the demands of monopoly
is a fiction depending for its assertion on
the belief that laboring men are fools and
the majority Of the other classes dishonest.
The country will be slow to see any sin
certify in the promise to reform the tariff
and redeem the surplus upon the part of a
political organization that made the tariff
that produced the surplus.
II is too late now to undertake to paclfy
the people by telling them that the public
lands are their heritage, and should be re-
served for small holdings of actual settlers.
Under the policies of the Republican party
all the evils of the monopoly of the public
lands by great corporations and foreign
spectators have been developed, and the
promise 10 correct them is like the promise
of the dishonest official not TO steal any
more if entrusted with power.
What the convention has announced with
reference TO foreign relations, the navy and
American shipping, is "A commentary upon
the shortcomings of its own party in its
management of those great interests.
The entire document sent out from Chi
cago, in its provisions, is an indirect ar
raignment of the policies Of the party of its
authors, and the best campaign paper for
the Democracy that could have been pub
lishcd.