The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-01-13
Get five of your neighbors to take Sentine
and your own Will be paid for.
AN OLD STORY.

most surprising, ''the extent of the system
now established here or the ignorance that
prevails about it." His revelations were a
surprise to 80 per cent. of the people, and
perhaps even more. 1t was natural to ex-
pect that the revelation would set intelligent
people to thinking and the press to agitating
measures looking to some cure for the evil
that threatens the foundation of our popular
institutions. But no. With a very few ex-
ceptions, not a word. Some expressions
from the press, if they in any specific degree
reflect the sentiments of the "better class"
they profess to represent, only add a more
somber hue to the gloomy picture. They
are talking modify Of necessity of increas-
ing the army and navy in order to keep
down the Clover classes, whom they think
will endeavor to check or reverse the process
by force
1t is the same old story, with scarcely
change in method or garb. The same care
lessness of results so long the spoils
be retained-frst take and then hold, first
cajole and then coerce. 1t would seem that
in no way has increased knowledge and CIV
ilization changed the ultimate ferocity and
institutions seems to eliminate in the two
classes, few masters and the many servants.
Yet these people are just as careless or ig-
norant of the lessons of time in their feeling
that an army will come as necessity of
order from such a situation, as they have
shown themselves foolish in agitating it.
They seem to have forgotten that while a
;I,t Ioe IL
sity of order from condition in which the
masses are reduced to servility by unjust
laws and oppression, that the military di-
rection when it comes, is from and by these
very masses. For a time an artistocracy
succeeds, but only for a time, In every
historical instance, such a conflict
has ended by the complete success
of the masses and the complete destruction
of the masters. Sooner or later the Ameri-
can people will wake up to the extent of
their injuries, and they will wake up ex-
actly at that moment, which also is sure TO
come, that these masters resort to AN army
for support. The great democracy of the
ancient world, that spirit of the rule of law
that destroyed the Roman aristocracy in
Cesarism should teach them. The destruc-
ton of the feudal Barons that followed the
efforts of the founder of the Hapsburgs, and
continued by Henry ". and Louis NV,
Frederick the Great and Napoleon, and, to
come down to our own times, the oblitera-
ton of the feudal power of Europe by Bis
marck, and, to come home, the destruction
of the slaveholding oligarchy, should teach
them the danger of appealing to force
to trample down justice and just laws. But
will they learn? We would infer from the
past, that fails to show an instance where
they ever did learn, that they will not. No,
they will appeal to force to sustain them
in their iI-gotten gains, and to
trample upon laws that were in
tended to prevent them from acquiring
the National property. Then will come the
old struggle of the survival of the supremacy
of the law and themselves, and the same old
story of the triumph of law will be repeated.
The law is the only safeguard of society,
and especially OF American social and polit-
ical institutions Our laws bearing upon
this very question, from the Constitution
down to the common law, are most excellent.
None better wore ever framed, and none
were ever worse enforced. Since the civil
war the party that came triumphantly
through it was for short time the respon-
sible trainers and executors of good laws.
But soon it became an organized machine
for plumber, and has existed during the past
fifteen years solely upon the strength of its
spoils. Cliques were formed with antlers
radiating out from the Congressional Com
mittees, from the Senate Committees, and
from the White House into every section of
the country. A corrupt judiciary has sus-
tanned its exactions. The enormous financial
responsibilities were farmed out to favorites,
and the continued power of the cliques was
consolidated into National Banks. Elections
have become synonymous with fraud. Cam
paigns were directed with soft soap" Public
lands have been gwen in enormous masses to
syndicates, and these syndicates were COM
posed of the fayorites OF the chiefs who
ruled the party in the Senate, aud who lately
have become the Senate itself. Strong in
possession Of the Government, they became
stronger in the possession of enormous cap
ital, and stronger yet in the possession OF the
tax-makjng power. Tax has done its usual
and characteristic work. Tax has done for
America what it has done for Ireland, what
it has done everywhere AMI now the country
is asked, with supreme insolence, what are
you going to do about it?" The indifference
with watch the subject is received in the
higher quarters OF society has too much the
ring OF after us the sleluge. The condition
OF America is one that will require degree
of reform that seems about hopeless in the
divided state Of our Government, which is
engaged in the pueriIities Of school.boy ex-
aminations. The Democratic party, only
half in power, has herculean labor in front
Of it, and party opposed To il heavily in.