Sharp County record., 1888-11-22


sand attempted fraudulent votes III the
best city on the continent what may "e
expect in cities not so fortunate! haV
a grand thing is the law Of registration.
Without it elections in this country would
be a farce. There must ba scrutiny on
this subj ct. The law must have keeneSC
twist for the neck Of repeaterS. some
thing more than slight and short I'M
prison nment 1t is an attempt at the as
sassinatiOn of the Republic when man
attempts to put in a spurious vote III
olden times when men laid unhOly hands
on the ark of the covenant they dropped
down dead. Witness Uzzah. And when
men attempt to put unholy hands on
the American ballOt-bOx, the ark or the
i Am @ican covenant, they deserve eX-
ter nination.
Another powerful foe of this sacred
chest is intimidation.
Corporations sometimes demand that
their employees vote this and that way IL
is skillfully done. 1t is not positively IN
so many words demanded but the en-
ploye understands that he will be frozen
out of the establishment unless he votes
| as the firm do, SO you can go into VII
lagos where there are establishments
with hundreds and thousands of en-
| ployes, and having found out the politics
| Of the head Of the factory you can tell
which way the election is going. Now,
that is damnab!e. If in any precinct in
| the United States man can not vote as
he pleases, there is something awfully
wrong.
do not wonder at the vehemence of
Lord Chief-Justic9 Holt of England
when he sud: 'Let the people vot9 fair
ly. Interference with q mans vote is in
behalf of this or that party, l give you
notice that if an offender against the
laws comes before me, will charge the
jury to make him pay we'll for it" No
shadow plutocratic, or mObOcratic, or
capitalistic. Every man voting in his
own way God and his own conscience
the only dictator.
Another powerful foe Of that sacred
chest, the ark Of the American cOnvenant
the ballOt-box, is bribery.
Very often it Is not money that bribes,
but it is office. "You make me Presi-
dent, and I'll make you a Cabinet officer;
you make me Governor and I'll make you
Surveyor General; you make me mayor,
and pIl put you on the water board; you
give me position, and pll give YOU posi-
ton" That is the form Of bribe often and
often in these great cities. lido not say it is
in our city, but you know again and again
throughout the land these have been the
forms of bribe offered SO it is often the
case that by the time man comes to an
off ce to which he has been elected he is
from the crown Of head to the sole of foot
mortgaged with pledges, and the man
who goes to Albany or to Washington to
get an office is applying for some position
which was given away three months be-
fore the election. Two long lines Of worm
fence, one worm fence reaching to Al
bany and the other to Washington, and
there great many citizens astride the
fence, and they are equally poised, and
they are waiting to see on which side
there is most emolument, and on this
side they get down. But bribery kicks
both ways. 1t kicks the man that offers
it and the man that takes it. Bribery to-
day you will admit to be one of the
mightiest foes of the American ballot
box.
nu0.n0t So. = Ly = - -,
chest lSl 4 FEtfffffttJ1US-.t character. Can
you find out from the newspapers, when
two men are running for Office, which is
the best? How often in the autumnal
elections the good man is denounced and
the bad man applauded, so that you can
come sometimes to no just opinion as to
who is the best man, and there are hun
dreds and thousands Of electors who go
up to vote so utterly befogged they know
not what they do. Is not that fearful
Influence to be brought upon the ballot
box Of this country? 1t has been so ever
since the foundation of this Government.
Defamation of character.
Thomas Paine writes Washington o let
ter and publishes it, saying; "Treacher-
Gus in all private friendship and
hypocrite in public morals, the world will
be puzzled to know whether we had bet
ter call you an apOState or an impOster,
and whether you abandoned good morals
or never had any," That is Thomas
Paine's opinion of George Washington
John Quincy Adams declared that he
was solaced in regard to the scandals and
the alathemaS inflicted upon him by the
fact that his father, John Adams, had to
go through the same process, aud John
Quincy Adams declared that he really
thought in that present election there
were men who gave their entire time to
manufacturing falsehood in regard to
HIM. Martin Van Buren, was always PIC
torialized as rat. Thomas H. Benton
and Amos Kendall were always pictorial
lied as robbers with battering rams,
breaking in the doors of the United States
Bank.
On the day on which Thomas Jefferson
was inaugurated President of the United
States, March 4, 1901 the following ap-
peared in the Sentinel Oa Boston: "Monu-
mental inscription. Yesterday expired,
deeply regretted by millions of grateful
Americans and by all good men, the Fed
eral administration OF the Government OF
the United States, animated by Washing
ton, Adams, Hamilton, Knox Pickering,
McHenry, Marshall and Stoddard, aged
twelve years. It's death was occasioned
by the secret arts and open violence Of
foreign and domestic demagogues. AS
one tribute of gratitude in these times,
this monument to the talents and services
of the deceased is raised by the Sentinel"
Under such defamation as that Thomas
Jefferson went into office.
My father told me that when Andrew
jackson was running for President of the
United States the whole land was flooded