Year: 1863

rooster.


France must not mistake our policy; else
she will have bitter waking from her error.
Amorioa. Stump spea kers aaa the Inde-


pendent Press.


OF all the aflctions of the present suffering
age that Of American stump speakers is per-
haps the worst. Not that English stump speak
ers are, on the whole, any more endurab,e
but we are always apt to exaggerate our own
personal share of common malady, and there
fore we refer more particularly to the Ameri-
can type of this oratorical influenza. During
political times those people who attend the
meetings of the different parties are deluged
with food Of twaddle from stump speakers;
and they deserve their fate for their foolishness
in attending the meetings. But even those Of
us who stay sensibly at home are by no means
exempt. We do not hear the speech; but we
are compelled to read it in the newspapers.
Why under the sun the editors publish such
trash we can scarcely explain. Perhaps it is
from custom and habit. Perhaps it is under
mistaken idea that the speeches are q sort of
news, and that the public desires to see them.
Perhaps it is because other editors set the bad
example. At any rate, column after column is
printed every day, and yet no one can salts
factorily answer the question why journals
should waste valuable space In publishing non
sense because il was spoken by Mr.. This or
That, when they would have refused it had 1t
been sent to them as q communication.


Take all Of the political speakers who are
now shouting themselves hoarse and their au-
diences deaf over the approaching election In
this State, and to what do they all amount.
Nothing. Take all of our stump speakers,
from Secretary Chase down. aud what do they
all says Nothing. They talk geeAt deal;
but their utterances are mere sounding words
The best speech Mr.. Chase ever made was at
Cincinnati; and he might better have stopped
with that; for he has been maundering ever
since. There Is Governor Seymour, who is
trying to spout himself into the next Presi-
dency, but who spouts so badly that there will
be very little left of him when the noxt Demo-
cratic National Convention assemblies. We
have about one hundred more such stump
orators as these now palavering among
US, and they emit nothing but wind.
Senator Wilson is in this State making
speeches, which would be revolutionary
if they were not silly, and which would be true
il they were not totally false. Governor Yates
is here, uttering blasphemies and telling bar
room stories, and thinking himself an orator.
Forney is here, displaying himself upon the
stump, and apparently ignorant of the fact
that to be good speaker man must possess
a good character and some ideas, and that,
therefore, he will never have chance ia the
oratorical line. Even Poor Greeley once in
while essays to deliver speech, and blunders
at It as badly as be does In his paper, when any
phrenologist could inform him that gift enter
prises, and not journalism or oratory is his ap-
propriate avocation. Such stump speakers a.
these are simply beneath contempt.


Then we have the Irish orator, Mr.. James +.
Brady, whose elocution Is pleasing because of
the brogue, but who never made as excellent
speech in his life as he did at the famous Miles
O'Reilly banquet. Consequently wc advise
him to retire upon the laurels he gained Oh
that occasion, and reserve his cloquence
for the bar. The Chevalier Raymond Is an
orator Of another kind; for he writes milk
and water articles in the Times, and
then repeats them, without the milk. from
the rostrum. Senator Hale, Of New Hampshire,
another republican advocate, has just wit
enough for circus clown; but his oratory is
about on q par with the addresses which a
farmer would deliver to q lazy team of horses
The only other name upon the list Of orators
before us which is at all worthy Of mention is
that Of Senator Chandler, of Michigan, who
owes his temporary Importance to the fact that
he once uttered base ISLANDERS against Mcclellan
and did not die "a soon as bis libels did. These
are specimens of our present stump speakers
We should blush to compare them with Web
ster and Clay and the other stump speakers of
the past, upon whom the mantes of Demos
themes and Cicero had fallen, and whose voices
moved the nation as they willed. Wendell
Phillips, upon the radical side, and General
Frank Blair, upon the conservative side, are
almost the only scions of the old oratorical
stock whom fate has left us; and how far re-
moved are they from their mighty prede-
cessors! A. Oakley Hall, whose recent clever
speech at Syracuse we publish this morn
ing, is another stump speaker who shows blood.
aud is the probable successor of Tristram Bur.
CESS, Of Rhode Island, whose sarcasm drove
Randolph from the Senate. But these few, like
CLEAN Of light in q dark room, only serve to
make the general darkness more evident


We object to our stump speakers because
they have no statesmanlike ideas, no national
feeling, no extensive grasp Of intellect, no
independence Of mere partisan issues, no apt
ness in popularizing great thoughts, no broad,
comprehensive views Of current events, no
power to foretell or to shape the future. Our
stump speaking, like all our political oratory
in and out of Congress, is a vor prrtcrea nhl-
q voice and nothing else. We should regret
this more sincerely were we not aware that
nature always makes compensation for the losses