Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-04-24
THE JEFFERsONIAN TOUCHSTONE'
An Appeal That 1t BE Eigldiy APP
piled and Enforced I'm the
Administration.

The Jeffersonian Association OF New
York held its sixth annual meeting Oh
Monday night. Lieut.. Gov. Black, hav'
ing been reelected President for the sixth
time, acknowledged the compliment III
the following speech:
1t is hardly necessary for me to de-
clare again my sense OF the Importance
of Jefferson Associations to the Democrat
ic party and the cause OF pure popular
government. My views on that subject
have been so often stated in your hearing,
that repetition of them at this time
would probably be neither profitable nor
edifying.
Imay say, however, that the restoration
of the general government to Democratic
hands makes it all the more necessary
that we should recur with greater devo-
ton to the principles of Jefferson and his
coadj tutors in the formation of the party,
in order that they may now again, after q
Federalist intrusion of nearly twenty-five
years, be rigidly applied and enforced IN
the Administration. We have no right
to fold our arms and rest supinely because
our candidates have been at last elected
and are at their posts. Good Democratic
government requires the eternal vigilance
OF the people. The Federal officials whom
we have chosen will need our organized
and intelligent support, if they are dis
posed to do thoroughly and completely
the work set before them, and if they are
not, then the rank and file of the party
will be untrue to themselves and false to
our posterity as well as to our ancestry,
should they fail to bring the policy and
the conduct of their faithless leaders to
the infallible test of the Jeffersonian
touchstone.
The situation of Mr.. Jefferson, when he
came in after Adams in 1901, was very
like that of Mr.. Cleveland to-day. The
offices were filled from the highest to the
lowest with malignant Federalists, who
had for years prostituted them to the
basest partisan uses, just as they were
when Gov. Cleveland succeeded Arthur
How did Mr.. Jefferson deal with the
placemen of the infamous Hamiltonian
spoils party? Let the Democracy ascer-
tain that, and they will have learned how
Grover Cleveland should, and how we
are bound to presume he will, deal with
the official representatives of the spoils
party so signally repudiated by the people
in November last.
Since our last annual meeting MANY
LETTERS Democratic Associations have
been formed throughout the country in
which the constitution of this one has
been more or less closely followed We
should be especially encouraged by the
movement in various quarters toward the
formation of county Jefferson Associations
like those of Clearfield and Northumber-
land. Should any great emergency arise,
should any new departure contrary to the
fundamental principles of the party, or
shocking to the truly democratic spirit of
our people, be proposed by men in whom
We have confded, the intelligent cooper
alton of these bodies might be of essential
service. The Democratic Societies were
the nurseries of Republicanism in the
momentous struggles preceding the popu-
lar victory of 1900; like them, Jefferson
Associations are designed to preserve the
government of the people by uniting them
In fraternal associations under the name
of Thomas Jefferson, that great apostle of
human liberty, whose name implies not
merely watchword, but a creed.-Har-
risburg Patriot.