Year: 1874

ANDY JOHNSON, the quonddm Moses
of the south, has again revisited the
glimpses of the moon. On Saturday
last he delivered an address before the
agricultural and mechanical association
of Sumner county, Tennessee, which,
like the most of the Honorable Andy's
efforts, is curious jumble of rank
demagogueism and hard common
sense, with thinly concealed UNDER
current of thought that the country Is
going to the devil because he is not at
the helm of affairs. 1t was, of course,
expected by those who invited him to
deliver an address on such an occasion
that he would confine himself to sub
iects german to the object of the as
sociation. And the speaker seems to
have started out with the idea that
such q course would he the proper one'
for he begins on agriculture and grave
ly announces that "it is one of the
foundation rocks of all good society
of all good government" Proceeding
next to show that agriculture would be
feeble and incapable Of accomplish
ing anything without mechanics
and that the two combined are
powerless without labor, he pronounces
the three together the foundation stone
of the government Itself. Referring
patronizingly to the order of patrons OF
husbandry, and bewailing the fact
that the farmers of the country do not
have fair share of representation III
the halls of congress, he claimed to he
the original granger, and cited in proof
thereof an extract from a message OF
his to congress in 1868, in which he
set forth the evils of monopolies, per-
petuities and class legislation.


He next jumped into the tavorite
pasture where he had roamed so often
before, and with the old illustrations OF
Cincinnatus, Archimedes, Paul and
Adam, established the fact, which no
sane man would dispute, that a man
might be a farmer or mechanic and
"be a man for a. that" The best he
could say of st. Paul was that he was
s"a very smart man, and wrote some
epistles which are referred TO TO this
day as models of compositions" Adam
was O tailor and Eve was a seamstress;
erao, he wasn't ashamed of having
been tailor, and every young lady
ought to be proud to be seamstrcss.
He scared aloft on one of the lottiest
flights of demagogueism in the follow
ing sentence:


an q mechanic ] would rather
wear upon my garments the dinge OF
the shop and the dust of the field as
badges of the pursuits of peace than
the tassel upon my hat, or the epaulcts
upou my shoulders, or the sword dang
ing in its scabbard 10y my side, which
had been stained by my brothers
blood, as the insignia of honorable
and glorious war.


With this furious burst of eloquence
he bid adieu to agriculture and me-
chanics and turned himself loose in the
field of politics. The remainder of his
speech was devoted to the discussion
of national finances, to defense OF
"My Policy" TO showing of how he
had been cheated out of the senator
ship heretofore, and to an exposition OF
his perfect willingness to take it now,
in spite of the bad treatment he had
met with on a former occasion. The
ex-president holds that there can be
no improvement in the material con-
dition of the country so long as the
present national Indebtedness hangs
like milestone around the necks OF
the people. His plan for getting rid OF
this is beautifully simple. 1t beats
straight out reputation out of sight.
His scheme is "that the six per cent
interest now paid 10y the government
should be applied to the reduction of
the principal in semi-annual INSTALL
ments, which, in sixteen years and
eight months, would liquidate the en-
tire national debt"


On the subject of the currency he Is
earnestly in favor Of retiring the ire
deemable notes Of the government and
the banks and substituting gold and
silver, ''designed 10y Providence as
universal circulating mediums" in
their stead. He shows from statistics
derived from the production end coin
age Of the precious metals since lsis
that there must Be a least 500, ,oeo, geo