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Blundering Blaine

Blundering Blaine image
Parent Issue
Day
2
Month
November
Year
1888
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The " üncrowned king " - somelimes callcd Blaine - made a speech at Chicago on the 2oth uit., in which he preferred a six count indictment against the democratie party and Cleveland's administration. The second oí his counts opened vvith this sentence: "The republicans arraign the president for having surrendered the rights of the country in the fishenes of the North American coast in a marmer derogatory to the dignttyofthe nation, and in utter disregard of the rights of the fishermen." One of the commisioners who negotiated this treaty of "surrender" was James B. Angelí, president of the University of Michigan ; a gentleman of New England birth and education; a life-long republican, whose patriotism was never before impugned; and who, - commended and indorsed by the whole body of republican senators from the New England states, and especially by Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, from which state he carne to Michigan, - was commissioned in 1S80, by the then acting President Hayes to negotiate a treaty with China, which treaty was promptly ratified by a republican senate. The thousands of political and personal friends of Dr. Angelí, in Rhode Island, Vermont and Michigan, will 110 more credit Blaine's insinuations that he was a party to the "surrender" of a single right of the country or the fishermen, or that he put his name to a treaty "derogatory to the dignity of the nation," than the general public can be made to believe that the author of the Mulligan letter is a second George Washington and "can't teil a lie." Blaine never opens his mouth without putting his foot in it. Minister West will be as baldheaded as a protected ron gate-post, or as gray-haired as a republican " infant industry " before he can match Blaine as a blunderen And on the 2jth uit., in New York, before his audience of Irish admiréis, Mr. Blaine again recurred to the subject, and entered "a protest against Lord Sackville West saying that the rejection of the fisheries treaty by the republican senate was a mere political ruse for this campaign." In this statement Mr. Blaine cither innocently or wilfully blundered, as Minister West, in his letter to Murchison, said not a word about the motives of the republican senators or their reasons for rejectingthe treaty. Mr. Blaine, imagining that Minister West was not ïgnorant of' public opinión, hit the thinking public over his héad. An ingenuous and truth-telling Blaine - if such a personage is supposable - might, should, and would have told hislrish friends,and throughthem the fishermen in interest, that the demerits of the treaty had nothing to do with its rejection; that its rejection was foreordained; and that the American cotnmissioners were semi officially notified - or as our friend Chauncey Joslyn would pat it,"iv ;n divine notice," in advance of its being agreed upon, that it would be rejected. So well understood was this that it was the current saying, "the bctter the treaty, the less chance it stands of ratification." Mr. West might have said, and without fear of contradiction, that it was rejected simply to prevent President Cleveland from getting the credit of an amicable and honorable settlement of a long pending difference. Blaine's guiltv knowledge of this fact made him the accuser of the senate. It was Blaine-like to put the nccusation into the moiith of Minister West. And u bis speech made at the fair grouiul, near Troy, N. Y , on the 2C)th inst, Mr. Blaine said, speaking of Minister West's faux pas : "Three foreign ministers, in the history of our government, have had their passports given them by the a Iministration at Washington for doing less than Lord Sackville has done in intervention with our affairs, and Mr. Bayard or President Cleveland neither one of them (I make the prediction to-day, there is a week left of the campaign) will dare send Lord Sackville home." Which reminds one of a story: A lawyer n submitting his case to a country justice emphasized his imagined points scored by the assertion, "Mr. Justice, you can't render a judgment against my cliënt." The justice kept busily writing in h;s docket, and when the lawyer repeated his "you can't" for the last time, closed his docket, and remarked with some vigor, "I don't know that I can render a judgment against your cliënt, but I know, by thunder, 1 have." And so Messrs. Bayard and the President: 'We don't know, Mr. Blaine, as we dare send Lord Sackville home; but, by thunder, we already have." But Blaine will continue to blunder, as wellin his predictions as his histo y. In his recent speech at Rochester, N. Y., Blair.e said that the steamer he carne home on "belongs to a company of American stock holders." He should also have told his Rochester hearers that the steamer was compelled to sail under the British flag bscausc suscessive republicm congresses nad so legislated as to make it impossible to build ocean steamers in the United States in competition with foreign builders; and because American capitalists and shippers are prohibited from buying foreign built steamers, registcring them and running them under the American flag. Tlie tariffor tax imposed on iron, steel and ship timber has enhanced the cost of steamers and vessels of all kinds and driven our commerce from the seas. Reform the tariff by cutting down tax.ition, and Uncle Sam's sails will again whiten every sea, and the stars and stripes once more gladden the eyes of the patriolic American tourist or sojourner in every foreign port. Recurring to the fisheries treaty, did it occur to Mr. Blaine when he made his recent attack on the President and Secret iry Bayard, because Minister West had heard the invitation of the republican spider and walked into his parlor, that this was the same West who had - Blaine being the judge - brains enough to outwit Secretary Bayard and Messrs. Angelí and Putnam? Did he exhaust all his brains in managin the fishery negotiations? A really shrewd and successful diplomatist could liardly have been hooked by an unknown Murchison. The electors of Anti Árborjy3-f Michigan who know Dr. Angelí anu have confïdence both in his ability and patriotism, should not vote to make this Blaine the premier of a Harrison administration and place our foreign interests in his charge. And that is just what a vote for Harrison and Morton will mean.

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Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News