Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1885-01-02
Philadelphia Press.
Mr.. Beecher's Plea.

Mr.. Beecher's pitiful apology on Sunday
was the feeble and hating plea of man who
is conscious that he has debased himself and
has forfeited the respect of his fellow men
No fall, however great. can obllterate MS
signal career in the past. No cloud OF I'M
becility in his closing years can dim the
lustre of his intellectual genius through the
long noon-day of its glory. The greater the
admiration for his powers in their splendid
zenith the severer must be the condemna-
ton of their perversion and prostitution, and
the sternest judgment will come from those
who were the warmest friends. Mr.. Beecher
speaks like one who feels that he has fallen
from his high estate. There is nothing
sincere or manly in his utterance. He pleads,
and excuses and extenuates, and sinks from
defence into sophistry, and from sophis-
try into deliberate untruth,
His apology instead of softening the sensa-
ton towards him, will Only deepen and inten-
sify the contempt which was inspired by his
conduct in the campaign, because IL illus
trates the same obliquity. 1t was not his
support of Mr.. Cleveland that excited the
hostility of his old friends. They would
under any circumstances have deplored
such a desertion of the cause he had so
long upheld, but if it had borne the stamp
of honest conviction and dignified advocacy,
thew would have passed it with few re-
proaches The rock of Mr.. Beechers offence
was not that he supported Mr. Cleveland, but
that he supported him with the argument OF
a mountebank and the methods OF harle~
quin. His campaign was one OF moral de-
basement and intellectual dishonesty. lie
hurled poisoned shafts of Islander against his
opponents and in Burke's phrase openly
pigged in the same dirty pen with the scan
dals of his own side Other men who have
been misled and found themselves confronted
with the stain on their candidate had the
self-respect TO shut their eyes and seal their
lips at least on that topic. But Mr.. Beecher
fairly revealed in the foulness. He declared
that he had made vow to sustain any man
who was assailed as he had been-thus bra
zerly proclalming the bond of sympathy. .
He flung out to leering crowds the fippant
and vulgar shield of boon Companl0nshlp
that if every man who had violated the
seventh commandment should vote for Mr..
Cleveland I'VE should elect him by major
itv of POO. 000!" He shocked the general
sense by giving out the maudlin and imbecle
letter 20 Mrs Beecher, which was confess
sion of wrong and travesty OF purity.
twas these coarse, indecent, dlsreputable
performances that brought down upon his
head the condemnation OF those VINO had fol-
lowed his great career and stood faithful even
| through ms dark tTldl II hS tii NV hp'"
then how his ribald speech had estranged
decent men and women, he knows it now.
His apology shows it. As he sees the strength
of Plymouth pulpit crumlling under his feet,
he seeks to stay the fall with cry as unman-
" as any of his utterances in the campaign.
He processes that he deserted the republican
party because it did not fully clasp hands
with the South--a reason which he never
gave before And he excuses his low-born
appeal to the violators of the seventh com
mandment on the ground that he spoke on the
stump instead of in the pulpit!-as II MIN
lister of the gospel had right to forget his
own self-respect anywhere. or to say on one
platform what would be unfit on any other.
Mr. Beecher's pretext as to the treatment of
the South bears the stamp of insincerity, and
his apology for the obscene banding OF profii-
gates is beneath contempt. He was once
distinguished for political courage and brave
utterances but this is unmaniy and unworthy,
1t is a melancholy close of great career.