Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-08-31
WHO WAS MEANT.

Yesterday mornings Tribune contained
a lengthy and interesting communication
from Judge J. R. Mcbride, in which he
took that paper to task for its conduct
towards that portion of the Republican
party which was opposed to third term
for President Grant. We give below
some extracts from Judge McBride's
article, and following these some from
the Tribunc's editorial upon it. Judge
McBride's article opens in this way:
It is not a pleasant thing to differ with
ones friends but if they insist upon kicking
you at pretty regular intervals, it requires
very humble spirit to submit without a show
of resistance. / occupy about the relation
indicated to the Tribune. 1t has for long
time past been in the habit of making
aspersions without qualification, in its ed
itorial columns, upon the motives of those
Republicans who, in 1880 and prior to that
time, deemed it their duty or their right to
oppose the nomination of General Grant for
President a third time, and, since his death,
these assaults have given tone to many OF
its encomiums upon the departed chieftaln.
Judge Mcbride then goes on to tell
wherein the Tribune had insulted the
anti-third term men, and says:
You say in this mornings Tribune-and it
is only repetition of many statements
made in like spirit-that those who refused
to support General Grant for third term
were a "scurvy crowd and that their pre-
tended sorrow at his death was simulated"
with much more in the same strain which L
need not repeat.
On the day of the funeral of the hero the
Tribune opened the grave of the dead Gar
field and charged him with "ineffable mean
ness" and "base ingratitude" because he de-
clined to permit Senator of the United
States to dictate to him whom he should
appoint to the Office of Collector of the
port of New York. In one sentence you
threw flowers on the casket of Grant, In the
next you violated the grave of martyred
President, in order to drop words of poison
on his name.
l allude to these articles to show how ap-
parently eager the Tribune has been to seize
upon occasions of universal sympathy with
the late hero of the country to assail those
who, in partisan action in the past, have not
been able to secure its approval. Your con-
duct in this particular, some of us have the
temerity to believe, savors largely of that
Mormon habit so familiar to US all, of using
funeral service as an occasion to wreak
spite on the living In this instance the
dead are included, as we'll as the living
offenders.
After this comes this wonderfully just
and accurate eulogy of the Tribune:
And I think the expression of such an
opinion now by the Tribune indicates more
of passion and prejudice than of calm delib-
Grafton, or respectful consideration, for the
thousands of honest and wise men who do
not share it.
These are quite severe charges, and
would naturally arouse the ire of the
Tribune They did, and it said concern
ing Judge Mcbride:
Nothing in our article reflected upon
Judge Mcbride or men like him, and if his
eyes had not been blinded for the moment
by unreasonable passion, he would have so
understood it. Never was a man SO bounded
and so lied about by certain crowd as was
Grant from 1872 until he, with Oonkling,
saved the election of the Republican candl-
date in 1880. Those were a scurvy crowd,
and there are not whips or racks enough in
the universe to make us take it back.
Now, seeing that Judge Mcbride was
hasty in thinking that such as he were
meant, (and his position in regard to the
third term business would fully justify
him in SO thinking,) by the Tribune, but
that he was not, for the Tribune says that
nothing in its article reflected upon him
or such men as he, it is certain that some
one must have been meant, and so we
think we are justified in concluding that
those whom the Trjb,,1oe did Ynean nv ita
article were the young Democracy"