Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1884-08-27
A BLOW AT COMMON MORALITY


We were hoping not to recur again
to the character of the Buffalo candidate.
We had turned away to indulge our oil
factories in little purer air. But the
New York Nation comes to the rescue In
a style so remorselessly reasonable to all
virtue that we turn that way once more
for moment, to bear it as best we may.
The Nation, Of course, sneers at the
Rev, DIR. Ball, of Buffalo He neither
needs defense from the Advance, nor can
be harmed by the Nation. His reputa-
ton, as Christian minister and author,
long time resident of Buffalo, stands
higher than the New York editor has the
strength to throw his missiles.
Another, Presbyterian pastor, of Buff
falo, of high position as he, affirms, with
even stronger emphasis, the same facts
and more. "Indeed," says DIR. Bell, "if
I am slanderer, dozen other pastors
stand under the same condemnation, and
two score more of them stand as indors>
ers"
But we have to do, just now, not chief
ly with Governor Cleveland, but with
the Nations defense of him. After gar
bling and minifying the facts to very
caricature that journal attempts to be-
smear with its dripping feculance the
most illustrious names in recent English
and American his tory in hope of blurr-
ing the contrast between them and the
reputation of its favorite:
"There has been no great benefactor
Of the human race (it informs us) who has
not been truthful to his trusts, disinterest-
ed, selfdenying. There baye been very
few who haye been chaste. The stand
ard by which some ministers now propose
to exclude Cleveland from high place,
would have prevented Washington,
Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, not to go
any farther, from taking any prominent
part in the foundation of the American
Republic. 1t would have excluded from
Office in England nearly every great
statesman or reformer of the last hundred
years. except perhaps (perhaps, observe)
Romilly, Wilberforce, and Gladstone.
1t would have visited nearly every prom.
inent politician in the Republican party
since 1860 with popular odium.'
Those sentences onght to wither the
hand that wrote them. We must thank
this inspiring instructor of'our sons and
daughters for new version of an old
proverb. 1t is not ambition" but a
greed for pollution, which lis the last in
trinity of noble minds"
English statesmen and reformers of
the last hundred years include scores of
men like Erskiue, Macintosh, Canning,
Buxton. Clarkson, Howard, the Macau-
lays, John Bright, Lord Shaftbury. The
| filthy tattle as to our own Washington,
| formerly current in the capitaI, has never
dared, like the sad lapses of Charles
James Fox, for instance, to show its face
in history. 1t is the congenial business
of ghoul to exhume it now for the pur-
| pose the Nation would make it subserve.
NEARLY every prominent politician in the
Republican party since 1860 suggests
such names as Summer, Buckingham,
Chase, Andrews, Ferry. Hawley, Hoar,
and others like them. We believe that
if even so radiant a paragon of virtue as
the Nations hero is to be gained at the
expense of such men as these, the Amer
ican people will count him costlier de-
licacy than they can afford.
"We are not defending incontinence, :"
says this preacher of the new gospel of
righteousness. Chastity is great vir-
tue; but every man knows in his heart
| that it is not the greatest of virtues, that
offenses against it have often been consist
ent with the possession of all the qualit-
les which ennoble human nature" etc.
He is defending incontinence. If he
can not zee it, we may excuse his heart
only at ruinous expense to his intellect.
No man who knows anything of human
nature.is ignorant that the most plausible
and insinuating of all methods of defend
ing vice is the cid cry, 1t is the way of
the world. Everybody does it, you know
The noblest men have been given to it,"
IF the Nation is not teaching precisely
that damnable doctrine to the youth
among its readers, then words have no
meaning.
In exquisite harmony with the general
tenor of the article, it closes with lordly
rebuke of whoever dares, at so inconven-
lent a time for its candidate, to denouDce
the pollution it excuses:
"Preaching of this sort at this time is
cant, and in its1most loathsome form, for
it fills every household in the land with
filthy suggestions and insinuations, Turns
the press into common sewer, and con-
verts scores of its editors into hypocrits
who must blush in secret over their own
ridiculous sermons and their simulated
righteousness"
The very sort Of super-sublimated
phariseeism that is shocked by the hon.
est Saxon of our English Bible, denounces
the practices on which the Nation
smiles so tenderly. If any vile sugges-
tions are set afoat, who is accountable?
Who is telling US that the iniquities to
which they point are among the unfortun
ate irregularities of the best of men? Who.
ever would trace home the responsibility
has only to calculate the latitude and
longitude of the office of the Nation
Req. DR.. Vest IN the AdUance.
The FIRST WHEAT.-The first wheat
raised in the New World was sown by
the Spaniards on the Island of Isabella,
in January. 1894. and on March 80 the