Los Angeles herald., 1890-07-12
TAKING DESPERATE CHANCES.

TAKING DESPERATE CHANCES.
Ordinarily no Democrat would object
to the creation of new states even on the
slenderest pretext. The prodigious ca
pacity for expansion of American COM
monwealths has been too fully illus
trated in the past to justify sneer at
their incipient weakness either in popu-
!lation or wealth. The great states OF
Missouri, Illinois, California, and others
too numerous to mention, were permit
ted to add their stars to our resplendent
galaxy at a time when there was little in
their then present development to JUS
tify their admission. But this gracious
action of congress, barring Missouri,
which was the subject of an envenomed
national controversy, was based on an
indulgent federal paternalism- on the
spirit in which man welcomed a
younger brother into the family circle,
rejoicing in the continued fecundity of a
common parent.
Far different is the animus of the Re-
publican party in the hurried creation
Of SO many new commonwealths. The
idea underlying this precipitancy is that
the Republican party, seeing that the
prism of it's influence is steadily being
restricted in the old, populous and
wealthy states, and inspired with an un-
!bridled lust of power, is determined to
jperpetuate it at all hazards, at least in
the senate OF the United States. This
lis precisely of piece with the acts of
the: old Federal party, so bitterly COM
tmented on by Thomas Jefferson, in the
last days of the administration of John
Adams. That decaying organization sup
posed that it took bond from fate for
continued possession of power, place
and profit by creating additional offices
and filling them in the dying days of a
party in the last gasp of its decadence.
The Republican party may boast that
it has packed the supreme court of the
United States-following in that respect
the example set by it's Federalist pred
ecessor-and that it has secured an as
cendancy in the United States senate
for years to come, but how easily may
all these empty and presumptous vaunts
be converted into the hollowest of all
mockeries-into the very shadow of a
ehadow-the simulacrum of simu-
lacrum?
What avails it that the Republican
party is creating rotten boroughs, in the
shape of bogus states, in the yet unde-
veloped arid lands of the far west, if the
splendid commonwealths in which art,
science and intellect have attained their
utmost development shall desert them
Idaho is poor substitute for the lost
state of New York, which is forever
hereafter gone from the Republican
party, even on the showing of the pres
ent census. Wyoming scarcely offers a
fitting equivalent for Pennsylvania,
which will this year wheel into the Dem
ocratic ranks, under the victorious lead
ership of Pattison and Black, to stay
there until parties shall have been reor-
ganized on issues different from those at
present existing.
The Republican party during the
present congress, has been cunning in
it's methods. 1t has not only been cum
ming but peremptory and unscrupulous.
Thomas B. Reed, the present Republi-
can speaker of the house of representa-
tives, stands out as distinetively as did
the celebrated Lord Strafford, the
Thorough" of the time of Charles l.
Strafford was beheaded. Reed will
simply have his neck broken politically,
and with it will be snapped the verte-
brae of his overriding and hypocritical
party.
The Republican party possesses a
great deal of dynamic force. But force
is not everything in politics, though it
may be in mechanics, and it may
often be misdirected in both. Instances
of the discomfort arising from the
ownership of too much force, lily ap-
piled, are supplied by the bull in a
china shop and the possession OF white
elephant. The Republican party has
turned it's bull loose, in the person of
Speaker Thomas B. Reed, and it has
bought its elephant, in the form of null
tiform states, two of which are required
to constitute the population of a single
assembly district in the state of New
York. 1t has been fooling with light
ming and toying with dynamite, and yet
it thinks that the explosion will not
come.
Wait for November.
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