Clarksville evening chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn) 1886-1890, 1888-10-23
THE ISSUE.


fairly understood. This is no fight
for Harris and Atkins" Was there
ever such an absurd statement? Every
man in Montgomery county knows
this is the very issue they have made
every day since the nomination of
our candidates for the Legislature, and
the very issue they are making to-day,
"no contest between prohibition and
anti-prohibition," and yet it was the
very fight they began against the
candidates before their nominations
and have kept it up since, though the
candidates themselves and their
friends admitted that the issue had
been fought and won by the anti
Prohibitionists, and the question was
dead, and in the convention a plank
was put in the platform pledging
themselves against legislating on the
subject: "no personal opposition to
Corban and Goodpasture;" and yet
they have been engaged in an UNI
ceasing warfare upon them ever since
they were nominated, and no such
indignity and outrage was ever Of
fered the candidates ofthe Democratic
party before. But they say the real
issue is whether the people have a
right to be heard. No one has ever
denied that right. No one has ever
denied the right of the people to
speak whenever they please. They
say in their address that the Execu-
tive Committee have nothing to do
with this right. This is exactly what
the Executive Committee said. The
committee says that convention
regularly called and all the districts
fully represented know better what
the people wish than the minority in
that convention can possibly know,
and when that convention failed to
call a primary, it is to be presumed
they spoke the will of the people
rather than the minority, and it was
their duty to conduct the canvass in
accordance with the wishes of the
convention and not at the dictation
Of the minority. The candidates say
they shall endeavOr to represent the
will and the wishes of the people in
the Legislature, and will give due
and proper weight to the expression
Of the opinion Of the people in any
way they see proper to express it,
but they will not pledge themselves
beforehand to obey the instruction of
a primary in the hands of few men
who have constituted themselves the
Democratic party of the county, and
who, it has been believed from the
beginning, would not support them.
They had publicly refused to pledge
themselves to support them in the
convention, and it is now quite evil
dent they never intended to.
No, gentlemen, you don't state the
issue right. The real issue is whether
the Democratic party in convention
assembled under the time -honored |
two-thirds' rule of the party has the
right to name the candidate for the
Legislature, or whether a small mi
n0rity lin this case ten out of fifty
one votes) has that right. You may
press constitutional questions, you
may talk of the Importance of the
election of a United States Senator,
the tariff, the railroad commission
question, the lobbyists, &C., &C.; all
are agreed upon these questions, but
at last you must come to the real issue
and it will do to repeat. Whether
the Democratic party in convention
assembled under the time-honored
two-thirds' rule of the party has the
right to name the candidates for the
or whether small mi
nority has this right, and this is the
issue which the people are called upon
to try on the 9th day of November.
the issue has been decided
against you by the National Conven-
ion of the Democratic party, by the
State Convention of the Democratic
party and by all the States in all the
Union and in all the Congressional !
districts in the States, and we ven !
ure the assertion that there is no