St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1886-10-07
BLAINE AS A CANDIDATE.
;eOrge william Curtis says He Will not
Hnrner'S WeekLu.

| The tone of the Blame republican
press since the Maine election shows
that Mr.. Blaine will be probably
strongly pushed for the republican
nomination in 1888. 1t cannot be
doubted that he desires it, because
nothing could be more distasteful to
him than to close his public life with
such defeat as that of 1SS4-a defeat
due to personal, and not to party rea-
sons. He was not defeated because
his party had lost public confidence,
| but because he was its candidate. But
a great many earnest republicans who
disapprOved of his nomination for va
riOus reasons were yet so persuaded
that republican opposition to repub-
can nomination was kind of treason
to the country and to human liberty
that they have come to think the cleo
ton of Mr.. Blaine Indispensable to the
vindicatiOn of the party, and to the
proper punishment of such offenders,
and more than one of them has been
heard to say that he now lived to Sc
cure that result. A candidate who,
in addition to this kind of support, has
the aid of the party machine and the
prestige which envelopes the chief par
ty leader, enters the contest with great
advantages. 1t seems, however, i'm
possible that the wise heads of the
party should think Mr.. Blaine's nOmi-
nation to be judicious. Many of the
leaders who supported him most
strongly upon the stump in '94, and
who most bitterly denounced the
treachery of mugwumpery, had been
most strenuously opposed to his NOM
ination. They knew that the cam
paign would be necessarily a prolong-
ed and desperate personal defence and
apology and explanation as it was.
They have seen that all did not avail,
and they know that nothing whatever
has occurred to make Mr.. Blaine a
more acceptable candidate, while much
has happened which would make it
easy for many who voted for him in
'S4 to decline to vote for him in '88.
1t is useless to urge in his favor that
nothing new can be said against him.
What was said in '84 was enough to
defeat him, and it was of a kind
which does not lose it's force with a
campaign. If the transactions of which
the Mulligan letters were the proof to
the public mind made him in the pub
lie estimation unfit for the presidency
in 1884, they will make him equally
unfit in 1888. If the explanations and
apologies and defences were fruitless
then, they will be equally fruitless
again 1t was then said that he had
been indicated by his election as SEN
atOr. Bnt by the same reasoning he
has now been condemned by his de-
feat for the presidency. The personal
arguments are unchanged. There is
no reason to suppose, and so far as we
know there is no evidence whatever,
that the voters who held him to be
personally unfit in "a will believe him
to be any more fit in 'SS. If this be so
will the party argument be stronger
then Undoubtedly it was the party
argument and the Irish democratic
vote which enabled him to contest the
result so closely in "a. But few intel
ligent men can suppose that the mere
party appeal against democratic sue
cess as a public danger can be as
strong in 80 as it was in '64. In "a
thousands of honest republicans be-
lieved that the election of Mr.. Cleve-
land meant payment of the rebel debt,
and compensation for slaves, and OPP
preston of colored citizens, and con-
troll of the government by its enemies,
and radical financial disturbances, and
a general panic and prostratiOn of in
dustry and enterprise. In view of
such calamities to follow the success
of the democratic candidate, they felt |
that it was a criminal Phariseeism to |
object to the character of the republi- |
can candidate. AS Mr.. Frye is report
ed to have put it, What was the ink |
spot on his skirt compared with what |
they allaOed Tn ha the mi yarsal Smirch |
opposed to him
But all this will be of no avail in 'SS.
1t will be alleged, indeed, that the