The Democratic advocate., 1888-01-07
rNpoRs1Na CLEVELAND.
james Russell Lowell Gives Him O
Superb Lift.


The following is the full report of the re-
marks of Mr.. James Russell Lowell at the
banquet of the Massachusetts Tariff Reform
League, which was given at Boston on Thurs
day evening of last week:
After the banquet Mr.. James Russell Low
ell raped the meeting to order. Mr.. Lowell
alluded to the analogy of their festival with
those others more peculiar to this season of
the year, which custom has set apart for mu-
tual good wishes and festivities, for here all
were stirred and closely related to what they
| believed to be for the honor and welfare of
the mother SO dear 10 us all. Continuing, he
said:
One certainly of the reasons that chiefly
suggested the opportuness of our coming to-
gether here has been the Presidents Message
at the opening of the present Congress. Per-
| sonally, | confess that / feel myself strongly
attracted to Mr. Cleveland as the best repre-
sentative of higher type of Americanism
than we have seen since Lincoln was snatched
from us. But we are not here to thank him
as the head of party. We are here to felic.
itate each other that the Presidential chair
has man in it, and this means that every
word he says is weighted with what he is. We
are here to felicitate one another that this
man understands politics to mean business,
not chicanery-plain speaking, not paltering
with us in double senses that he has had the
courage to tell the truth to the country with
ont regard to personal or party consequences,
and thus to remind us that country not
worth telling the truth to is not worth living
in-nay, deserves to have lies told it and take
the inevitable consequences in calamity.
Our politics call loudly for broom. Mr..
Cleveland, think, has found the broom and
begun to ply it. But, gentlemen, the Presi-
dent has set us the example not only of cour-
/ I,,4N nd IA
has kept strictly to his text and his purpose.
He has shown us that there was such thing
as being protected too much, and that we had
protected our shipping interests so effectually
| that they had ceased to need protection by
ceasing to exist. In thus limiting the field of
his warning and his counsels he has done
wisely, and we shall do wisely in following
his example His facts and his figures will
work all the more effectually. But we must
be patient with them and expect them to
work slowly. Enormous interests are inyolv-
ed and must be treated tenderly.
1t was sixty years before the leaven of Adam
Smith impregnated the whole sluggish lump
of British opinion, and we are batch of the
same dough. / can remember the time when
bounties were paid for the raising of wheat in
Massachusetts. Bounties have fallen into
discredit now. They have taken an alias and
play their three card trick as subsidies or as
protection to labor. But the common sense
of our people will find them out at last
If we are not to expect any other immedi-
ate result from the message than that best
result of all human speech, that it awaken
thought, we can at least already thank it for
one signal and unquestionable benefit. 1t is
dividing, and will continue more and more to
divide, our parties by the lines of natural
cleavage, and will close the artificial and often
mischievous lines which followed the bounda-
ries of section or the the tracings of by gone
prejudice.
We have here question which equally con-
Germs every man, woman and child, black or
white, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from
the Gulf of Mexico to the Bay of Fundy.
We have here topic which renders nugatory
all those problems of ancient history which
we debated and settled more than twenty
years ago by manly wager of battle, and that
so definitely that we welcome here to night
with special pleasure some of the brave men
with whom we argued then aid whom we in
sisted all the more as keeping as countrymen
that they had taught us how to value them.
In the course of his address Mr.. Lowell
was interrupted frequently by storms of ap-
plause. At his first reference TO President
Cleveland DIR. William Everett, Jr., proposed
three cheers for Cleveland, which were given
with will