The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1902-04-09
a "VERMONT IDEA"?

The Journal reprints the essential part
of the st. Adams Messengers recent
announcement for Fletcher ID. Proc
tor, because it is the most serious and
elaborate, as well as the most ingen-
ious and the best written presentation
of the reason for the Proctor candi-
dacy. 1t is, also, as it must neces-
sarily be, the most disingenuous, the
most sophistical, the most inconsist-
ent with "the truth Of history.
The contemporary invention and
elaboration of "the Vermont idea"
illustrates its acrobatic skill, its abil-
ity to adapt itself to emergencies de-
handing a sudden and radical change
of front. But recently the eye of the
Messenger was steadfastly fixed on
the candidature of DR.. Webb for the
governorship. Its preference for Webb
was probably real. Circumstances
served to make him the Messenger
logical candidate. " Dr. Webb may
have been lured into the canvass for
the governorship by a consciousness
of the Messengers love and assur-
ance of its support. Is he still abid-
ing in that belief, or is he now sadly
murmuring,
"Perhap, it was right to dissenble your
love,
But why did you kick me ,wnstairsY"
Having Tilted its first love and pick
ed up new one, it was incumbent
OH the Messenger to explain, and after
a month of meditation on the difficult
ties and embarrassments of the new
situation, when the explanation
could be put off no longer, it evolved
and elaborated 1.-THE Vermont idea. "
Like many others in an embarrassing
situation, racked by contending i'm
pulses, the contemporary jumped out
of the pan in which it was frying into
the fire of blazing contemporaneous
circumstances. Its Vermont idea
is a misfit. 1t is subterfuge. 1t
has no foundation III sense or reason
or history. 1t is well and ingeniously
phrased to give it an odor of patriotic
sanctity, but it has no application to
any real conditions ever existent or
now generally existing in this State
1t is cloak, an emergency idea.
AS the Waterman has shown, TWEEN
tyfour of the States forty-fve Chief
Executives were born and reared, or
lived for periods of varying length,
out of sight of the green old hills, ~
in the oriental phrase of the contem-
porary, Whence has come the
strength, these many generations, of
the representative of the Vermont
idea, whom the citizens of the
State, according to the inventor of
the ''idee", are at this time, longing
to have "come to sit in the seat of
Thomas Chittenden and be Governor
over the people.
Now Chittenden was foreigner,
coming to Vermont i'll middle life,
for speculative reasons, as also did
other immigrants from the States
to the south, from whose ranks Gov
ernors, Senators, and Judges Of the
State were subsequently chosen. The
original Green Mountain Boys We're
the red men. The white men were
Observation-Disclosures hith-
er, some by the love of adventure,
some by the fertility Of virgin soil,
some by opportunities for profitable
enterprise When, in the case Of i'm
migrants, did a statute of limitation
begin to run that, under "the Vermont
idea, " should constitute those on one
side of a time line the elect of an
Office holding class, those on the other
side the ineligibles? And who in
stituted that law?
In the last decade three of the
States five Governors were immi-
grants They were not natives of the
soil that has nourished Vermont S
glorious past, from which according
to the Vermont idea all her hopes
of a glorious future must spring. -
This somewhat grandiloquent senti.
ment is clinched by the declaration
that the thing embodied III this rather
hazy idea, involved in the mists 6
rhetorician has thrown around it
"is a question Of principle, not o.
men. " When and where was thi
principle discovered, and the need o
formulating it presented? Nothing
was heard of it until very recen
period-in the latter part of Febru
airy. Governors had hitherto beef
elected, Judges and United State
Senators chosen, and the question
whether their infant eyes had opene,
on 3" the green old hills, and theme
had come the strength Of later years
had not been raised No question O
place of birth or time of immigratio
beyond the reasonable residence pc
gFmEE,s sFazzEa 81
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