Year: 1876




The following remarks were made
by Henry Watterson on taking the
temporary chair in the st. Louis con-


GENTLEMEN oFTHE CONVENTION
We are called together to determine,
by our wisdom, whether honest gov
ernment, administered by honest men,
shall be restored to the American peo-
pie, or to decide, by our folly, that it
is the destiny of this country to pursue
an endless, eVer-revolving circle of
partisan passion and corruption, until,
with the loss of our material Well-be-
ing, we lose the poor mans last hope,
civil liberty itself.


Every citizen of the Republic, be he
of the one party or the other, feels, and
has felt, for many day, the depress-
ing influence of what are called hard
times. We look about US, and we see
neglected fields and vacant houses
the factor door is closed the furnace
door is shut; there are myriads ofidle
hands; the happy activity of prosper
GUS life is nowhere to be found.


Loyalists falter while honest men
starve.


Empty the mart and shipless the bay.


What is it that has wrought so great
change in land that, under the rule
of an intelligent, progressive, Consti-
tutional party, advanced within half a
century from the condition of huddle
of petty and squalid and provincial
sovereignties toa foremost place among
the nations of the earth? The reason
of men must answer. Partisan mis-
rule and factional misdirection. The
Republicans, my friends, are not alone
responsible. With them rest the dis
graces with US the follies. These
twin agents of national mischance,
working under the miserable rule of
contraries, have kept the people of the
North and South asunder, and have
supplied sustenance to corruption.
They have disturbed values. They
have unsettled prices. They have made
our whole financial system cheat aud
snare. They have driven the best
elements of political society into exile,
and have organized charlatanism into
a sort of public polity, enabling the
rogue to get cheap advantage of his
dupe, and sacrificing every popular in
terest to the lust of that oligarchy
which has become so encrusted with
power as to believe itself entitled to
rule by the sheer force of It's own
wrong doing. Somuch let US set down
to the convenient pretext of war. So
much to the long account of damages
between the North and the South.


It is for you to say whether the same
conflict, with consequences multiplied
and magni6ed, shall, by any act of
yours, be inaugurated between the
East and the West.


| shall not undertake, on an occasion
of this kind, and in presence so i'm
posing, to enforce the familiar lesson
of mutual forbearance. Nobody doubts
our capacity to make battle among
ourselves. Entreating you to direct
your energies to the common enemy, L
ask indulgence only on my own behalf.
You have called me to place not
merely of distinction, but of difficulty;
to place which requires the best
| training of better man than am.
In taking it, | trust to your confidence
and good nature, and to heart in
capable of an unmanly or unfair act.
The work before us should relate to
ideas, rather than to individuals. 1t
is the issue, not the man, that should
engage US. We have come here to
make the peoples, not our, fight for
free no less than for honest govern
ment; for the reform of the public
service, and the regeneration of the
public morals; for administrative re-
lief from administrative nihiLisH, en-
braced in the simple creed of home
rule, reduced taxes and living chance
for the South as well as the North, for
both the East and the West.


IfaDy thing comes of our proceeding,
it must spring from the spirit of fell
lowship which warmed the followers
of Andrew Jackson and Silas Wright
of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster
whose political descendants meet to.
gether on common ground at last tC
wrest the Government of their fathers
from the clutch of rings and robbers
Federal and State, and who mean tC
extirpate these wherever they are
found, whether they be Republicans
or Democrats.


The points of the speech were EN-.
phasized by frequent applause.