Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1888-01-04

have lived some OF the noblest men this
country has ever produced. The sturdy
settlers who established themselves on
that stony soil and gave name to the city.
planted only one Boston. More than a
century since 1t was made strikinglv evil
dent that there were two Bostons on the
same territory--One the American Boston,
represented by James Otis, Samuel Adams,
John Hancock, and their illustrious assO-
ciates. The other was the thoroughly
British Boston, men Of culture, of aristo-
cratic tastes and sympathies, of respecta-
BILE character and dignified lives, politically
thoroughly in accord with the ruling class
of England, who honestly thought that
America should be the provincial domain
of the British crown and it, people rightly
governed By the ruling class of the mother
country. The first Boston, through the
gradual working of events, had its way.
and Tory Boston finally had rather
tough time oft, as Halifax and Mr.. Sabine
strongly testify.
But there are now three Bostons. One
OF them Is made up of the hoodlums, the I'M
washed, cherishing no special unpatriotic
senfiments-but constituting that unter-
rified democracy, which certain Mugwump
or,tors addressed in Faneuil Hall, in No
venber 1884, after the election of Cleve-
lani was known-those Mugwump orators
who told thus motley crowd that the tri-
umph of a new party had been secured.
The British Boston was not entirely wiped
out in the decade between l77J and 1885.
The seeds remained germinated, and the
outgrowth remains today in considera-
Bile proportions. This British Boston
IL not the hoodlum, the unwashed, I'M
terrified democracy, but it assumes to be-
long to the other end of the social line to
stand on Il higher stratum of culture.
thought and opinion. THIS Boston last
week held its much heralded banquet.
Fittingly it had for its presiding officer
cultured, cosmopolitan gentleman of re-
fined classical tastes, and deserved literary
fame. His years of residence in England
seem to have SO deepened his love of the
mother country that he has become so
thoroughly impassioned with English
economic ideas rs to regard the great body
of Americans unripened dough" and
fully convinced that America should be
an outlaying, dependent province of Great
Britain. How completely Mr.. Lowell be-
came indoctrinated in English opinions.
how fully Englishmen understood that he
was sincerely one of their own in the last
years of his official residence among them,
is conclusively shown by the English
press of those years, even more strikinglv
manifested than its hearty and vociferous
praises of Cleveland's message. James
Russell Lowell was the fitting presiding
officer of this Boston banquet.
And who appeared on the platform to
voice the sentiments of this assemblage of
Boston gentlemen The three principal
speakers, those who, beside the chairman,
said anything of much importance, were
Senator john T. Morgan, of Alabama,
Representative VIM. G. 7. Breckenridge,
of Kentucky, and Representative VIM. l..
Wilson, of West Nirgnia-three Free
Trade Democrats from the Southern States
long dominated and afflicted by the
political ideas enimical to the best
interests of the entire Nation.
Well, what message did these Southern
gentlemen bring to British Boston We
have taken pains to examine what they
did say, and which this Boston banquet
cheered to the echo. Their views on the
tariff and protection were precisely those
OF the Old South, as voiced by McDutHe.
Calhoun and llayne. when they threatened
dis-union in 1880, and which were repeated
at later day by Jefferson Davis and his
kind. While these three Free Trade
members of Congress from the South only
restated the ideas of Calhoun, McDuihe,
and Davis. advancing not an inch from
the ground occupied by the Southern
Democratic leaders of fifty years ago,
their Boston speeches show nothing of
the trenchant, vigorous logic of Calhoun
aud other Free Trade orators of his time,
who were SO crushinglv answered by
Webster. Clay and other representatives
of the American system of Protection.
Yet these stale, oft-repeated arguments
Of the Old State Rights South were ap-
plauded to the echo by this Boston BAN
quet. But the Other Boston is vet to
speak--the Boston of Webster. of Nathan
Hale, of the Lawrences. the Boston of
American enterprise and American in
dustry, the Boston to which can come the !
representatives of the truly American
South, which Henry Clay and John Bell
once taught and led, and of the mighty
West thoroughly inbued with American
ideas and American enterprise. This will
be a Boston banquet, of which New Eng
land will not be ashamed, and whose
speeches and sentiments will be received
with joyous acclaim by thoroughly
national Americans throughout the land.
Hurd is Il Free Trader too honest to wish
to deceive, too proud to deny his own
opinions. Some of the free trade journals
are pretending that President Cleveland's
message was not free trade document,
after all. Now Frank Hurd. who is being
doomed for Vice-President on the ticket
with Cleveland next year. was asked the |
direct question: $40 you regard Mr.. |
Cleveland stronger with his free trade |
message than he was four years ago % and |
Mr.. Hurd replied "The Democrats will |
Mr. ,.,I -,
cans will nominate Mr.. Blaine, and the is
sue will be free trade on the part Of the |
Democrats, and protection on the part of
the Republicans" Mr.. Hurd is generally |
supposed to know what he is talking about,
and he is very high Democratic authority. !