|DURING the recent conventions a great many good speeches have been made
which did not get into print for various reasons. Some others did not
even get a hearing and still others were prepared by delegates who could
not get the eye of the presiding officer.
The manuscript of the following speech bears the marks of earnest
thought, and though the author did not obtain recognition on the floor
of the convention I cannot bear to see an appreciative public deprived
of it:
MR. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: We are met together here
as a representation of the greatest and grandest party in the world--a
party that has been first in peace, first in war and first in the
hearts of its countrymen, as the good book has it. We come together here
to-day, Gentlemen, to perpetuate by our action the principles which
won us victory at the polls and wrenched it from an irritated and
disagreeable foe on many a tented field. I refer to freedom.
Our party has ever been the champion of freedom. We have made a
specialty of freedom. We have ever been in the van. That's why we have
been on the move. Where freedom a quarter of a century ago was but a
mere name, now we have fostered it and aided it and encouraged it and
made it pay.
We have emancipated a whole race, several of whom have since voted the
other way. But we must not be discouraged. We are here to work. Let us
do it and so advance our common cause and honor God.
But who is to be the leader? Who will be able to carry our victorious
banner from Portland, Me., to Portland, Ore., gayly speaking pieces from
the tail-gate of a train? Who is sufficiently obscure to safely make the
race? (Cries of "Jeremiah M. Rusk," "Rudolph Minkins Pitler," "Blaine,"
"James Swartout," "John Sherman," "Charlie Kinney," &c.)
The eye of the nation is upon us. We cannot escape the awful
responsibility which we have to-day assumed. With all our anxiety to
please our friends we must not forget that we are here in the interests
of universal freedom. Do not allow yourselves to be blinded, gentlemen,
by the assurance that this is to be a businessman's campaign, a campaign
in which conflicting business interests are to figure more than the
late war. It is a fight involving universal freedom, as I said in our
conventions four, eight and twelve years ago.
We have before us a pure and highly elocutionary platform. Let us
nominate a man who will, as I may say, affilliate and amalgamate with
that platform. Who is that man? (Cries of "Blaine, Blaine, James G.
Blaine," "Lockwood, Lockwood, Belva A. Lockwood," and general confusion,
during which John A. Wise is seen to jerk loose about a nickel's worth
of Billy Mahone's whiskers.)
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the convention, there has never been a
more harmonious convention in the United States to my knowledge since
the Sioux massacre in Minnesota. We are all here for the best good of
the party and each is willing to concede something rather than create
any ill-feeling. Look at Mahone for instance.
We have a good platform, now let us nominate a man whose record is in
harmony with that platform. Freedom has ever been our watchword. Now
that we have made the human race within our borders absolutely free, let
us add to our magnificent history as a party by one crowning act. Let us
fight for the Emancipation of Rum!
Rum has always been a mighty power in American politics, but it has not
been absolutely free. Let us be the first to recognize it as the great
corner-stone of American institutions. Let us make it free.
We have never had any Daniel Websters or Henry Clays since rum went up
from 20 cents a gallon to its present price. The war tax on whiskey for
over twenty years has made freedom a farce and liberty a loud and empty
snort in mid-air. 'Who, then, shall be our standard-bearer as we journey
onward towards victory? (Cries of "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine," and
confusion.)
Gentlemen, I wish that a better and thrillinger orator had been selected
in my place to name the candidate on whom alone I can unite. Soldiers,
rail-splitters, statesmen, canal boys, tailors, farmers, merchants and
school teachers have been Presidents of the United States, but to my
knowledge no convention has ever yet named a distiller. I have the honor
to-day to name a modest man for the high office of President; a man who
never before allowed his name to be presented to a convention; a man who
never even stated in the papers that his name would not be presented to
the convention; a man who has never sought or courted publicity even in
his own business; a man who has been a distiller in a quiet way for over
fifteen years and yet has never even advertised in the papers; a man who
has so carefully shunned the eye of the world that only two or three
of us know where his place of business is; a man who has such an utter
contempt for office that he has shot two Government officials who
claimed to be connected with the internal revenue business; a man who
can drink or let it alone, but who has aimed to divide the time up about
equally between the two; a man who had absolutely nothing to do with
the war, not having heard about it in time; a man who defies his
culumniators or anybody else of his heft; a man who would paint the
White House red; a man who takes great pleasure in being his own worst
enemy. (Cries of "Name him! Name him!" Great confusion, and cries of
pain from several harmonious delegates who are getting the worst of it.)
Not to take up your time, let me say in closing that the day for great
men as candidates for an important office is past. Great men in a great
country antagonize different factions and are then compelled to fall
back on literature. What we want is an obscure and silent chump. I have
found him. He has never antagonized but two men in his life and they
are now voting in a better land. He is a plain man, and his career at
Washington would be marked with more or less tobacco juice. For over
fifteen years he has been constructing at his country seat a lurid style
of whiskey known as The Essence of Crime. Quietly and unostentatiously
he has fought for the emancipation of whiskey everywhere. He says that
we are too prone to worry about our clothes and their cost and to give
too little thought to our tax-ridden rum.
Then, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, here in the full glare of public
approval, feeling that the name I am about to pronounce will in a few
moments flash across a mighty continent and greet the moist and moaning
news editor, the grimy peasant, the pussy banker and the streaked tennis
player; that the name I now nourish in my panting brain will soon be
taken up on willing tongues and borne across the union, rising and
saluting the hot blue dome of heaven, pulsating across the ocean,
rocking the beautifully upholstered thrones of the Old World and
calling forth a dark blue torrent of profanity from the offices of the
illustrated papers, none of which will be provided with his portrait,
I desire to name Mr. Clem Beasly, of Arkansaw, a man who has spent his
best years manufacturing man's greatest enemy. I hurrah for him and
holler for him, and love him for the (hic) enemy he has made.