Western appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1885-18??, 1888-04-28
REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES.


Party Is Bound to Succeed Next Fall.
Mr.. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN: We have
heard many good speeches and many good re-
ports from the different sections of this great
State. hail, not from Appomattox and the
+, celebrated apple tree exactly, but from the
next best place, the fair county Of Mclean,
which, geographically and ornamentally, we
sometimes think is the breast-pin of this gal
1ant Republlcan State; q county where Repub-
hcanism is constituent of the common air,
ana where the soil is too good to grow the nox-
lous weeds of Democracy; county in which,
under the wise admonition Of that great father
, OF Republicanism, Abraham Lincoln, this Re-
publican party was born; county which gave
Grant $500 majority, and proposes to beateven
her own splendid record at the coming election
in November. And what 1 have said in regard
to the Republicanism OF Mclean County will
apply with equal force to the entire country
"A party asking the support of the free peo-
pie should be able to look forward without
fear, and backward without shame. Twenty
three years have brought US beyond the sound
OF Grants cannon at Petersburgh A new gen.
Grafton with faces toward the rising sun are
upon the stage. In the race for industrial sue
cess men look more to the future than to the
past, and, in my Judgment, the party that sue
ceeds in the coming Presidential election must
show not only q better record, but also a better
prospectus than its opponent. If record
alone insures success, the Republicans would
never have lost power. If a record alone could
defeat a party, the Democrats could not, any
time in forty years, have carried the filthiest
ward in New York City,
But three years ago an inscrutable Provi-
dence, moving in a mysterious way, permitted
this Democratic party to come into power in this
country For twenty-four years the Republic
an party had triumphed at the polls; but now
since the advent of Democracy It's greater trl-
INIT Of itS rio.
famers. The party in power has in three
years proved itself the most musty and noisome
depository OF political vacuity and decay to be
found in the world. There are barely enough
live men in the Democratic museum to exhibit
the mummies and take gate money. The public
service runs to-day solely upon the momentum
supplied by Republican force and ideas; and
those in power, though having the desire, have
not the courage to change its course. All they
can do is to ride.
The Democratic party arrived at the White
House without single sincere conviction it
dared avow. The barbarous ideas which had
once vitalized it for evil had all been consumed
years before in the white heat Of the aroused
public sentiment Of Christendom-in fact slain
by the rising spirit of militant Republicanism.
Through all the grand years of Republican
progress-the grandest years in American his
tory-aye, the grandest years in human history
the leaders of the Democratic party sat like
!dazed owls upon dry limb of the charred and
blackened trunk of rebellion, and solemnly
hoeted that constitutional liberty was beng
destroyed by the Republican party. The great
statesmen and patriots who arose to immor-
tally out Of slavery's decline. and stand to-day
canOnlZed in the grateful memories of Il race,
were all, in the active days of their glory, the
targets of Democratic abuse The politics of
each successive Democratic campaign consist
ed IN taxing back an old falsehood and telling
Of nd tv
seemed lost upon the Democratic managers
But we can afford to forgive all the hard
words said of us Dy the Democratic party, in
view OF the great admiration attested by their
actions, which speak louder than words. Imi-
tation is the highest possible praise. Through
all the years of Democratic abuse, that party
has been industriously padding out its withered
frame and shrunken shanks, in the vain hope
OF making them fill the Republican pattern,
and, really, it is not their fault if our old
clothes don't fit them. Through the dust and
debris which marks The historic course of Re-
publican achievement the managers of the
Democratic party have crawled slavishly on
their bellies after the advancing Republican
column. They wear no plume to-day they did
not pluck from the tail of the Republican eagle
and, usually. about the time the bird was ready
to shed.
Searching around in dark political corners
the Democrats at length found in their party
a. Village statesman so obscure as not to be
widely odious They took this man up and
loudly proclaimed him d great savant and
political reformer True he had then never
reformed any thing, and has not yet, but there
seems to be a theory that he can. Anthems
were sung over his discovery, in which Mr.
Curtis and Mr.. Schurz carried the alto and
tenor, and the reformers OF Tammany fur
nlshed the heavy bass. This champion of
Democratic reform was altogether too lofty to
init tod ~, tho
troubled Lincoln and Grant twenty-five years
ago. The reform ear was not attuned to hear
the guns of Sumpter, or the echoing call of
Father Abraham for s. three hundred thousand
more. The eye SO keen for the penny abuses
of the civil service, could only see the "glory
OF the coming of the Lord through the me-
dunn of substitute; and when peace and
freedom blushed over glad land the heart of
the reformer thrilled strictly by proxy! The
great moral movement of the centuries thun-
dered itself through the hey-day of Grover
Cleveland's youth, and he made no sign. Such
small things were beneath him. He was, evil
IDENTIFY, waiting for the disabled soldier on
whose SCARED and shrivelled person he might
illustrate the benefcence of modern Demo-,
cratic reform.
Impartial history will write 1t down that this
Government had never, since Washington's
first inauguration, been more faithfully, more
honestly or more efficiently administered than
1t was on the day Arthur passed il over into
the hands of Cleveland; and yet campaign
or the most virulent abuse and falsehood de-
celVed some Republicans into believing there
was corruption in high places. and that the
public good required "a change"
The vain efforts of Mr. Cleveland to carry
out the false pretense of the campaign and
pose before the world as great reformer have
been painful in the extreme, and remind one of
nothing so much as a hippopotamus trying to
balance on slack-rope. His whole administra-
ton has been q solemnly stupid masquerade,
with spoi.s and party greed as its real motive
ana Clvll-Servlce reform as it's false and dis
honest pretense. Despite the vigilance of I'LL
nois' own great reformer, Mr. Oberly, the pub
lie service has been made the battening-g ground
OF campaign strikers where the dirtiest party
service tlnds high and sure reward. 1t was T
DeleVe, member OF the Presidents own party
VINO said t/aed Democrats were all right, but he
objected to tried and CONNECTED Democrats.
Not least OF the duties of the next Republican
canvass will be to tear the mask from this re-
form humbug. The facts are at hand and the
fraud under which Democracy came in must
DC exposed. and when exposed the American
neople will lash it from it's high places with
whip of scorpions.
The President, realizing the thinness of the
ice beneath the Democratic reformatory. has
lately made a feint in the direction of the sur
Plus ana the tariff. One naturally asks, in view
OF his present alarm, why he did not mention
the subject sooner. Emerging from the fog of
his own turgid rhetoric, to make his first intel.
ligible utterance on any question of National
Importance, Mr.. Cleveland proves himself the
sworn enemy, not OF the inequalities of the
present tariff, but the enemy of the principle
OF protection. The Republican party long ago
set the example of revising the tariff, and may
be relied on to correct all it's present and its
Er1f Tho,
American people will never allow They will
never permit the men who can only view the
tariff from the cupola of an English factory
through the free-trade goggles of Richard Cob