The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1901-10-17

can people content with humbuggery.
1t has ever been SO. In the beginning
they were intensely loyal to freedom
and to slavery. The zealots of freedom
triumphed. 1t was right they should.
When they had won the grand battle
of a holy civilization against the odious
relic of buried centuries and decaying
nationalities, they surrendered to the
political jack-knife carpenters who were
framing a history of selfishness and in
competency which should forever shade,
with disgraceful somberness, the es-
cutcheon of the state
ut is strange-even miraculous-that
such an intensely principled people as
have inhabited, and do now live in Kan
bles by men without social worth or in
dividual integrity or intellectual power
or patriotic instinct or loyal impulse.
But SO it was and is. The ways OF
Providence are past finding out The
miracle of human progress is yet a mys-
terry, and the prophecy of patriotic
hope is yet a vision
Lane was clumsy political mounte-
bank, and an lily concealed religious
hypocrite. Pomeroy was a subsidist of
no mean propOrtiOnS-nOt averse to rob-
bling his government-though he was an
elevated bean-ShoOter and the child of
public charity, born in the pangs
of great calamity. The one failing to
justify his deeds unto himself-the last
infirmity of evil'-in the grim frenzy of
a ludicrouS remorSe, stained the state
less in his manner of death than he did
in his manner of life. The other put
miles of railroad between him and the
scenes of the disgrace by which he
smirched the state, sought death in the
grateful obscurity to which he was born,
and died felon.
Ross was a typical printer without
principle politics or self respect, but
with respect enough for others to go in
to voluntary exile. Many printers in
the state have not exhibited that vir-
tue.
Vol all 1ar.l11 NJ
junction, a pretender without shame
and citizen without patriotism
ingalls, advertised the state only to
gain gear for Ingalls, To his ears the
screeching of notoriety, though offensive
to others, were sweetest harmony. He
wrote no lines of enduring policy upon
the scroll of craftsmanship. He formu-
lated no law which promotes the pros
perity of the people He gave no pre-
cept for the melioration of unfortunate
man. His example is as elusive and in
tangible as are the evanescent bars of
the northern aurora A vitriolic shade
is the legacy he left to Kansas as a re-
compense for its pampering goodrie:ss to
him.
Plumb was a senator, not CT the
United States nor for the state of Ka n
sas, but for Plumb and Hood.
PETERS period passed. The hiatt
is observable in that no craftsmanship
sincerity nor shame fringes, garnishes
nor hangs upon it's borders. lie was
more than zero. but his deeds are
naught.
Evil as was Ingalls,, he was in time
followed, but not succeeded, by worse
specimen of the genus, homo. His rank
was taken, but his place not filed, by
one who gave years of his life to the
perpetuation of all the crimes of human
slavery, to the killing of loyal men and
to the futile but reasonable attempt at
the destruction of the republic. W it'll
others of his kind he joined hands, r ed
dened in the blood of slain patriots, in
an effort to turn back on the dial Of
time the hands of fate, which we re
pointing to, nearly. the hour of unit
versal liberty. God in His mercy hi IS
drawn the veil of oblivion between hi m
and humanity; and he now gropes in a
solitude as awful and sempiternal as d o
those whom Charon will not ferry, wan =
der on the banks of Styx-
"a bakers dozen of Bakers would
not fill the space of a statesman. On his
political tomb is writ 'Hic Jacet.' What
other caIamities Providence has in store
for the state none guess; but these
portend some final fall from which it is
to be hoped there will be regeneration.
..Crozier Harvey, Perkins and Martin
do not count They were subterfuges.
Their weight in the scales of humanity
government and civilization was and is
desert air was burdened with no frag-
senatorial toga and drew the salary of a