Read at a meeting of the Essex Club, in Boston,
November, 1885.
AMESBURY, 11th Mo., 10, 1885.
I AM sorry that I cannot accept thy invitation to attend the meeting of
the Essex Club on the 14th inst. I should be glad to meet my old
Republican friends and congratulate them on the results of the election
in Massachusetts, and especially in our good old county of Essex.
Some of our friends and neighbors, who have been with us heretofore, last
year saw fit to vote with the opposite party. I would be the last to
deny their perfect right to do so, or to impeach their motives, but I
think they were mistaken in expecting that party to reform the abuses and
evils which they complained of. President Cleveland has proved himself
better than his party, and has done and said some good things which I
give him full credit for, but the instincts of his party are against him,
and must eventually prove too strong for him, and, instead of his
carrying the party, it will be likely to carry him. It has already
compelled him to put his hands in his pockets for electioneering
purposes, and travel all the way from Washington to Buffalo to give his
vote for a spoilsman and anti-civil service machine politician. I would
not like to call it a case of "offensive partisanship," but it looks a
good deal like it.
As a Republican from the outset, I am proud of the noble record of the
party, but I should rejoice to see its beneficent work taken up by the
Democratic party and so faithfully carried on as to make our organization
no longer necessary. But, as far as we can see, the Republican party has
still its mission and its future. When labor shall everywhere have its
just reward, and the gains of it are made secure to the earners; when
education shall be universal, and, North and South, all men shall have
the free and full enjoyment of civil rights and privileges, irrespective
of color or former condition; when every vice which debases the community
shall be discouraged and prohibited, and every virtue which elevates it
fostered and strengthened; when merit and fitness shall be the conditions
of office; and when sectional distrust and prejudice shall give place to
well-merited confidence in the loyalty and patriotism of all, then will
the work of the Republican party, as a party, be ended, and all political
rivalries be merged in the one great party of the people, with no other
aim than the common welfare, and no other watchwords than peace, liberty,
and union. Then may the language which Milton addressed to his
countrymen two centuries ago be applied to the United States, "Go on,
hand in hand, O peoples, never to be disunited; be the praise and heroic
song of all posterity. Join your invincible might to do worthy and
godlike deeds; and then he who seeks to break your Union, a cleaving
curse be his inheritance."