The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1896-02-21
The Critical Moment.

A few days will now decide, says
the Baltimore NeWs of Monday last,
whether or not the first Republican
government this State has known for
"A generation will write itself down a
contemplate failure. 1t WAS sent i'll
to power upon the high tide of re-
form movement never matched for in
tensity in our history. If there was
any one thing which the people eX-
pected oft, it was the enactment of a
thorough and effective civil service
law. If there was any set of men
whose support was essential to its sue
cess, it was the men who constitute
the reform element in Baltimore CITY.
Every one of these men looks upon
civil service reform as the indispensa-
bic condition of all other improve
ments in government. Besides the
reform organizations and the individ-
uals belonging to them and in sympa-
thy with them, there was a great
agency without whose support Repub-
lican success would have been abso-
lutely impossible. The independent
press, which eXerted itself to the ut
most TO secure Republican success, did
so in the expectation that the Repub-
lican party would fully recognize the
obligation to the cause of reform if it
obtained possession ofthe government.
These obligations were made not mere
ly by the words of the party platform,
but by the utterances of the candidates
and by the whole spirit in which tue
campaign was conducted The Cam
bridge platform was only little be-
ginning; the longer the campaign con.
tinued, the more pronounced became
the commitment of the Republican
party to civil service reform and cleo
ton law reform.
If, after all this, the House of Dele
gates is going to fly in the face of all
that the people have expected of it, it
will not only do disgraceful thing,
but will be colossal blunder. If the
Republicans in the House of Delegates
could only realize their position, they
would not think for moment of COM
hitting such a folly. BY doing it,
they would be throwing away the first
chance for respectable standing
which their party has had for gener-
alton. By exhibiting themselves in
the role of a set of unblushing office
grabbers, who are ready to throw away
the future of their party-not to speak
of the interests of the people-for the
sake of little longer and complete Ii
cense to gather the spoils of an unde-
served victory, they will justify all that
was said of them by those good Dem
ocrats who preferred to suffer even the
evils of the Rasin Ring rather than
put our government into the hands of
a party which as constituted in this
State, they regarded as intrinsically
incapable of anything above dickering
and office-grabbing. Do the Republic
can members of the House of Dele
gates wish their party to fall back into
the contemplate condition from which
last falls campaign raised it? Do they
wish the independent Democrats who
voted the Republican ticket last fall
in the face of the warning that the Re,
publican party in Maryland was not
fitto be trusted-do they wish these
independent Democrats to acknowl-
edge that the warning was just, and to
abandon all hope of good from the Re
publican party. Do Mr.. Wellington
and Mr.. Lowndes intend to let their
party drift back into its former low
condition? If not, the time has come
for swift, energetic, decisive work.
The Bruce bill comes up in the House
of Delegates ON Wednesday, and the
only way to stop the rising tide of pub
lie condemnation and disgust, is to
press 1t to its passage without delay
and without alteration.