Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1895-03-20
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
lOttawa Journal.l

The possession of power usually ex-
erts demoraIiZing effect on its posses
sor. This not only applies to individu-
ais but to collections of individuals. 1t
applies most emphatically to parties.
The democratic party demonstrated
this for years, until it eliminated in the
civil war. It made them drunk with
big opinions of their own Importance.
II blinded them into believing that the
democratic party and the government
of this country were one and the same,
and that black slavery was the qulntes-
sence of both. Accepting these as ak
lomatic premises, they reasoned that
opposition to slavery was treason to lib
erty. Hence they fired on Sumpter,
hanged free-state men in Kansas, and
murdered Abraham Lincoln. They
did all this until they were rebaptized
in their own blood, and the hills and
valleys of the South were MANFRED
with their dead. The conceit was
hacked out of them with the sword and
shot out of them with the musket.
That same spirit so much in evidence
in the antebellum democrat is strongly
asserting itself in the plutocratic re-
publican to-day.
Nine.tenths of the ragged, unwashed
republicans of today actually regard
the republican party and the govern
ment of this country as one and the
same thing. When LewelIing was vot-
ed into the chief magistracy of this
commonwealth two years ago, the
mass of the republicans regarded him
with the same hatred as if he had been
forced upon them by foreign bayonets.
The mass of the gang that made up
Wilkerson's deputies two years ago
was bowling, surging mob, that hun
ge:ed like hyenas to imbrue their hands
in dwellings, blood.
Republicanism of today is q shelter
for the assassins of modern liberty; 1t
IS a blanket for crime, an asylum for
the ignorance and venality of this
western world.
The spirit of liberty has long since
left the republican party and winged
Its flight to other realms, and nought
now remains but the fecuIent, fes-
tering body, that poisons, contami.
mates, and destroys.
Republicanism of today is a syno-
nym for lawlessness. The republican
politician of today applies himself to
the task of trampling on law and right
with the same cheerfulness and alacri-
ty that the young mother does to the
task of nursing her smiling babe.
Every day furnishes instances in
proof of this assertion. Look at the
latest from Indiana. But yesterday
the governors private secretary was
murdered in that state. Not on some
lonely highway. nor by masked high
waymen. No; but by republican legis-
lators and in the legislative hall of the
state, while he was on the official mis-
sion of conveying an official message
from the governor to the speaker of the
house.
Think of It'll Human credulity can
scarcely comprehend it,. Think OF the
spectacle of this martyred official, with
bruised and bleeding face and blood
streaming from his body, pressing for
ward to deliver the governors veto,
while the republican lawmakers assail
HIM like wild beasts, and at last clutch
the document from his feeble and DIV
ing hand and bear it away in triumph;
and all this in the sacred halls of leg
islationl
If the governors veto did not reach
the speaker by a certain time, it would
have no force or effect, ard the bill
sought to be vetoed would become law.
This was the way republicans prevent,
ed 1t from reaching the speaker. Read
er, what do you think of republican,
ism?