Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1890-12-10
Political Suicide as a Fine Art.

The Force bill is being vigorously push
ed by our republican Senators
This is short session, and it must go
through at once or not at all.
The programme therefore is to appear to
give plenty of time to debate, but if the bill
is unduly delayed to appeal to Speaker Reed
for copy of his gag law for use in the Sem
ate Chamber.
The House under the rulings of Reed last
spring ceased to be deliberative body. IL
became republican machine, to be swung
for party purposes.
There is now danger that the Senate may
borrow these machine methods and jam an
obnoxious and infamous measure down the
Threats of the American people in spite of
the protest which they made on November
4th.
We have indeed fallen upon evil days
when the President in bis message can de.
libsrately urge the, passage of bill intend
ed to put the control Of elections through
out the South into the hands of his own
party bosses, thus depriying supreme States
of rights granted by the constitution,
stigmatizing them as dens ofpolitical scoun-
drels because they happen to ba situated
south of the Potomac River, and giving rs-
publican heelers power to count ID their own
candidates whether they are legally elected
or not.
The scheme is born of political reckless
| ness and is the last resort of desperation.
1t was conceived by men who still hate the
South with virulent malignity, who reach.
ed the limits of their public usefulness when
the war ended, and have ever since been
lunatics on the subject of Southern disloy-
atty. They belong to former age, but
were left over to vex this generation be-
cause there was no place to put them in the
other world.
The gentlemen who lead in this project
are Edmunds, Frye, Hoar and Chandler
four crooked political sticks. They are
moss-covered old timers, frayed out rem
nants of New England abolitionism.
Their fell and fateful purpose is to send
federal supervisors to the south to take
charge of the next Congressional election,
to discredit every white man as an moor.
rigible rogue because he persists in being a
democrat, and to hand the several States
over to the negroes, provided they agree to
vote the republican ticket.
| In sour old age they dispense with the
necessity of opinions and have nothing left
except their prejudices. They are a COM
| pOnent part of the old regime ana have no
better conception of the enormous progress
which the American people have made DUR
ing the last thirty years than stillborn in
| IanG mas or algebra.
Against these men and their Force bill is
the best judgment of the East, the love of
fair play which Gharacterizes the West and
Northwest and the sense of justice which
prevails in all parts of the country.
They have made split in their own par
ty. Opposed to them are men like Ingalls,,
| who never yet found a word long enough or
| strong enough to give him spiritual salts
faction when denouncing the democrats,
who believes that every man who isn't
republican will freeze to death in sheol,
but who sees that so gross an act of inius-
tice as this Force bill W III recoil with furi.
GUS, if not fatal, energy.
Aud quay, in many respects the best par
| ty organizer in the country, a desperate
strategist, who in a hot contest would steal
the silver dollars from the eyes of his dead
mother-in-law to buy republican votes with
he, too, knows that the Forcs bill will be
the epitsph of his party in 1892 and opposes
its passage.
Still determined effort is being made all
along the line to push it through. Conyic.
lions are smothered, good Judgment is
blurred and partisan Senate seems ready
to sacrifice even the peace of the country
Tor the sake of a measure which will keep
alive the old batreds of ante belIum times.
All right. If the republican party in
slsts on committing suicide we shall be- on
hand when it swallows the drug.
The Mckinley bill shivered the hopes of
that party and an indignant people at the
polls repudiated it. The Force bill ought
to finish the work and make it necessary to
write an obituary.-N. Y. Herald