Bisbee daily review., 1908-08-12
HENRY F. ASHURT'S SPEECH
At PRESCOTT CONVENTION

Following is the speech delivered
by Hon. Henry F. Ashurst of Coconinc
county in placing the name of Marcus
A. Smith before the territorial conyen'
tion at Prescott on Saturday last;
Mr.. Chairman and Gentlemen Of the
Convention:
1t is a frequent thing to see an hon
est but benighted republican of aus
tere rectitude and frigid virtue say
Il stand for all the Roosevelt reform
policies but am opposed to Bryan's
policies" That poor benighted republf
can does not know that the truth Ii
that President Roosevelt stands fol
nothing of any vitality that he did not
borrow from the democratic platforms
of 1896 and 1900. The democrats oi
the Uaited States were advocating
all those reform policies and were
working side by side with their great
leader from Nebraska for ten years
while this self-appointed champion Of
these policies. now in the white house
was before the American people de
nouncing Bryan and his policies as
dangerous and anarchistic.
But let me be not misunderstood
for there is much good in Theodore
Roosevelt, for he was wise enough to
make some attempt, feeble though IL
was, to put part of Bryan's reform
measures into actual practice; and in
so far as Roosevelt has advocated
democratic ideas and insofar as he
has mauled and thumped wicked re
publicans and wicked democrats with
his big stick, he deserves the unstint-
ed praise and gratitude of every lover
of our country. Rooseyelt's career has
been one long succession of spectacu-
lar acts, some of wLich have been
creditable to himself and the country
and some of which have not. He does
not follow the words Of the great
cardinal, who said:
Love thyself last,
Cherish those that hate thee,
Still in thy right hand carry gentle
Peace
To silence envious tongues"
But he acts on the theory of GER
tain distinguished Hibernian who once
remarked: When you see head
hit it,"
The chief fault of this remarkable
man lies in the fact that he is daily
looking for some new slogan to win
unthinking applause. When he wanted
campaign iuHOS' III l5p1' II Nto NY
dear Mr.. Hartman" but later, when
he played to the galleries, it was an
other kind of Harriman-with a big
ID" He is the only president who
ever found it necessary TO commence
each days work with a bulletin to the
people announcing that he still re-
manned honest. He has grown so ac-
customed to obsequious adulations
showered upon him by appointees and
egTegious vanity to the point of tune
faction and his habitual attitude to-
ward other great men has come to be
an attitude of supercilious disdain.
At the Chicago convention last June
the republican delegates, under the
leash of this masterful man, nominated
a 'residuaTy legatee' as their presi-
Dental candidate; while at Denver,
the democratic delegates, in obedience
to the sacred voice of all the people,
nominated as their presidential candi-
date a man of unwavering fidelity to
the cause of truth and justice.
Gentlemen of the convention, l
could easily cite several instances of
evident insincerity on the part of the
Roosevelt administration in its re-
peated fulminations against "rich NAL
efactors," to use the presidents
phrase, but one illustration will be
sufficient to show beyond all doubt
that absolutely no attempt has been
made by this administration 70 i'm
prison any rich malefactors." In