Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-03-17
Political Conflict,

EDITOR DEMoCRAT:-The preliminary
effort manifested throughout the Demo
cratic Club to effect an organization OF
Democrats, upon platform composed OF
fundamental Democratic principles, and
at the same time embracing every ele-
ment essential to good and loyal citizen
ship, have been followed by some pecu-
liar and unexpected developments. 1t is
lifting the masks in which certain people
have been masquerading. No one has
yet been found, possessed of the effrontry
and hardihood, or so degenerate,
as to question the soundness
of a single principle embraced in the
platform upon which the new effort is
founded. That every citizen should ex-
ercise free and untrammelled Judgment
in politics; that there should be mutual
non-interference between Church and
State; that every person should yield
obedience to law involving, of course, the
discontinuance of polygamy-coupled
with the other and essential principles of
free government, are political doctrines
which any lover of freedom would at once
regard as unassailable.
In connection with these doctrines, it
is affirmed that whenever the sentiment
among the people of Utah becomes pre-
dominent in their favor, that this would
be sufficient guaranty of republican
government, and Utah should be adj
mitted as a State. The end sought is
free local self government. This, in
brief, is the proposition of the Democratic
Club and its adherents. 1t is believed
that the promoters of this new
and rational policy are possessed of
sufficient intelligence not to commit the
gross absurdity of putting a candidate
into the field, with promise to the peo-
pie, that if he is elected by their stuff
RACES, his efforts will be engaged in pro-
curing their future disfranchisement, and
subjugation to the despotic sway of
commission of foreign appointment. The
principles have scarcely been questioned,
but the promoters have been assailed on
account of the principles.
Who are the assailants? Among the
first to appear were the tools and agents
of that political hierarchy mis-named the
Peoples Party. The pretended love of
Democracy which many of the adherents
of the party so much delighted to affect,
at once vanished, upon the first honest
and clear enunciation of Democratic
principles. The rage of the sycophants
of dominant priestcraft has found vent as
was to be anticipated. But these are not
the only ones who have been unable to
stand the light of political truth.
Like the blear-eyed owl blinking in
the light of day at the mouth of
AL,
ginning in the form OF anonymous COM
munications to utter their screach of dis
may. The latter is no doubt a hetero-
geneous group. 1t may embrace some
who through desperate infatuation, still
linger for food near the decaying and
malodorous corpse of the Republican
party. Itmay include some so-called Dem
ocrats of splenetic souls and simple minds,
who have been unable to see the Republic
lican under the guise of the Liberal party,
and are unwilling tobe locked fromtheta
of that diminutive organism. 1t does in
clude all that class who accumulate vul-
gar and senseless TRADES as merchandise
to whom regeneration means plumber,
who correctly estimate that a Legislative
Commission is but case well stocked
with skeleton keys and burglars instru-
ments of which they hope to be the chief
benefciaries. All the maligners of young
Democracy together, indeed, make a
combination of the most sordid kind.
These several component elements, each
without principles, without morality,
without reason, abandoned to hope, are
about ready to strike hands and make
common cause against that political
decency, which is their antipodes. This
is as it should be. They are naturally,
and hopelessly, members of the same
political household. GERBER.
SALT LAKE CITY, March II, 1884.