Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1884-08-07
An Irishmau's Plea for Blaine.

nan, of Sioux City, Iowa, delivered sub
stantially the following ringing speech
My home is in the State of Iowa.
travelled 400 miles TO be present at this
meeting, because understood there was
patriotic work 10 do. and whenever the
long roll of Observation-Disclosures is sound
ed l deem it my duty to stand up and be
counted. (Applause.) 1t may be difficult
for others to understand what it is that
holds our hearts together, but to our
selves It's plain. There is an Invisible
cord, moral essence called nationality
that binds our hearts. You have heard
that the sun never sets upon British
dominion. that the drum beat of Britain
is heard around the world. Very true
So also is the throbbiDg of the Irish
heart, and wherever Irish hearts are
scattered tonight, whether in the back
woods of Canada, or the jungles of At
RIGA, or the bogs of Connemora, or the
glens of Donegal, whether they sentinel
the Stars and Stripes upon the Western
plains OF guard the banner of st. George
in the wales of India,
"One in name and in fame are the sea
divided Gael"
One in spirit, hope and purpose are the
scattered children of the Irish race.
(Cheers.) This is an Irish-American
meeting, and trust that it will mark d
new era; the beginning of our age of
reason, when We shall be no longer the
chattel property OF an ungratefnl pOlit-
ical party, but race of men, seeking
knowledge for the purpose of being right,
and conscious of the right voting accord
ing to The dictates of our consciences
There must not and there shall not be
an appeal to race prejudice. nor shall we
invoke a new Ireland here. This Re
public is the home of majority of our
people, and for good or for i'll the destiny
of our race is hers. By every interest
which appeals to enlightened seitishness.
and by every impulse which animates
the nObler passions of our souls. we are
reminded that whoever else is recreant
or false it is our special duty to be true
to America, to guard her honor and pre-
mote her prosperity. This. l take it. is
the guiding motive of this meeting
Uong- applause.J
Heretofore in my life l have been a
Democrat. | became citizen after the
close of the Rebellion; and, regardless
of the right or wrong of that bloody
controversy, when the reconstruction
period came, [ was a Democrat. saw
the conquered people of the South upon
their backs and voted to let them RISE
| voted for Horace Greeley in 1872; for
Tilden in 1876; and voted for Hancock
in 1880. And now that decline to vot
the Democratic ticket (so-called) in 1884
it is not that l have surrendered any
principle. but that the Democratic party
has overturned its altar and taken to
running after false gods; that it is found
in vicious company, consorting with the
Golden Club of England, with the Tories
and the dudes; that it turns its eyes no
longer to the Goddess of Liberty, but has
erected for its alteration the golden calf
of monopoly, with side altar al which
it prays by fits and turns to the msta+
phOrical goddess which it blasphemious-
ly calls "the Star-eyed goddess of re+
FORM" In 1879 the Democratic party, in
It's racing after false gods, ran afoul of
the Golden Club, invited the lascivious
embraces of England. sold its bifthright
for a mess of pottage, and forfeited its
claim forever to the votes OF the Irish
Americans. (Applause.)
DEMOCRATIC INSULT TO IRIsHMEN.
Why the Democratic party should dare
to offer to the Irish American voters its
policy of free trade. and claim for it our
support, is something that L cannot un-
derstand, unless it is the assumption
that we are utterly ignorant of the his
tory of the free trade policy, and its de-
structive effect upon the land of our
fathers, while, fron the Treaty of Linn
erick to the accursed Act of the so called
Union in 1900. she crippled our manut
factures by restrictions. While foreign
rule has been the crowning curse of
Ireland, and the landlord system its most
potent i'll. have always contended that
the destruction of Irish industry by
British law and policy WAS the under
lying if not the immediate cause of the
great Irish famine of 1916 and lS47. In
1845 the population of Ireland was s.
100000. Decimated by 400 years of mil
itary violence, century of penal laws,
and more than century of legal iniquity
the very blood of people shed in an
effort to eXterminate them seemed, as it
were, the seed of new generations, and
the old Celtic race, like Israel in captiv-
ity, multiplied in chains" Then came
the famine, the potato rot of 1916, the
hunger, the fever, the agonies, the exot
dus, and, worst of all, the English land
lord with his crowbsr brigade.
The people were driven to agriculture
as their sole dependence. That ind duStry
suffered partial failure. Tbs landlord
received or seized the greater part of all
that grew; and the Irish peasants, who
had sweated and toi.ed under the sum-
mer sun, saw the products of his fields
vanish from his sight. Free trade laws
had already robbed him of an OppOrtu-
nifty to labor for a living, so he crawled
into his cabin and died. People starved
in land where money would buy food,
and where food was in abundance for
sale, but they perished because English
legislation had destroyed their manufae-
turing industries, whicn would have
yielded money regardless of partial
failure of the crops.
THE CLAMOR FOR CHANGE
We are told that this country of ours
is suffering for change; that its people
are over taxed; that it bends beneath
Gho Ouluou VI VlUO,OOU,UUU duludl sur
plus; that its energies are psralyzed,
and that only certain doubtful con-
save it from ruin and de-
struction; and the panacea proposed for
its calamities is the election of Demo-
cratic President. daughter, applause)
Now, what are the facts? Human intel
ligence is more widely diffused among
US than anywhere else on earth, and
human wealth more equally distributed.
We have the richest country on earth.
1t is richer than China, richer than India.
Richer than Russia with its seventy
millions of people; richer than Britain
with her accumulated wealth of nearly
one thousand years. 1t may not tie true
that the Government under which we
live is to be credited with all this, but it
is true that suffering(?J people have
accom- plished these results under the in-
tiuence of our government or in snite of