The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1910-03-10
FOOLlNG WITH The SUFFRAGE.

A certain sustained calm in the pub
lie mind is. indicative of the entire
equanimlty with which the people view
the possibility of another suffrage per
petration by the Democrats. The wise
men of some of the counties have been
proposing so-called municipal election
bills and are exultant because they re-
ceived enough votes to go through, for
the enactment of the Elkton and Eli
colt CITY bills NAV be taken as assured.
Yet those who support these bills are a
part of the same old crowd that sup
ported the Straus Bill and the fate of
that measure is too Lainful to mention.
Nothing remarkable that they should
seek petty revenge on the public by
forcing their grandfathers' provisions
on helpless little towns. The signifi-
cant fact Is that they have not dared to
carry out their cowardly threat to pur-
sue the same course with Baltimore.
1t would really be an interesting situa-
ton to have the Democrats undertake
to dragoon~t the voters who repudiated
the disfranchisement measure by such
a majority as to leave it like a piece of
cold lead the day after it was drawn
out from the fires Of the polls.
There is really not the slightest pros
pect that the Brewington election raid
will be pulled off. 1t sounds real cow
boyish; it smacks of DR.. Jamison, in
South Africa; it is redolent with the
aroma of the road agents of dime novel
fame; but as proposition for an order
" state, in decent and orderly times, it
is utterly unthinkable. 1t was con-
ceived in nightmare and framed in a
spasm of moral delirium tremens. The
mere suggestion to cut off from regis
tration anyone whom the registers,
packed for the purpose under a prever-
sion of law, might mark for victims, is
so utterly revolutionary that one can
imagine the militant might of Maryland
doing to the party and the individuals
who would undertake such a scheme,
what, in the popular and sufficient
phraseology Of the day is termed "a
plenty" The suffrage jockeys would
not know whether they were bestriding
thunderbolt or simply riding on a
third rail before they got fairly into an
act of spoiliation that would arouse
every decent voter in Maryland and
cause the courts to make short work of
the ballot assassins. But why permit
language to take the color of the Brew
ington proposal? 1t is such contemp-
tible little piece of fretful malice that
one, to maintain creditable expression,
nnust back away from 1t.
That is what the Democratic blow
hards in the legislature will do. No one
has the slightest desire to placate them,
to cajOle them, to implore them not to
do anything they have a mind to do in
the way of enactment of the Brewing
ton or like measures. They are free
agents they think, and let them act ac-
eordingly until they have another
thought coming to them. But they will
not adopt the Brewington proposal for
the same reason that the Attorney
General gave his support to the protest
of the Republican State Central Com
mittee against the ballot outla ages that,
despite the learned and ethical opinion
of that official, were carried out any
way. The Democratic leaders who re-
spect their political and professional in
tegrity and haYe regard for the assets
that most men foremost in public life
prize, will be far from giving counte-
nance to any plan that would be repro
bated the country over and would sound
their political death knell. They are
only shamming about the Brewlngton
affair in order to pull off their real
scheme. They have simply been whet-
ting the appetite of the legislature anti
suffragists in order to get them ready