Samuel J. Tilden says we are a nation of thieves and rascals. If that is
so he ought to be President. But I denounce him as a calumniator of
my country; a maligner of this nation. It is not so. This country is
covered with asylums for the aged, the helpless, the insane, the orphan,
the wounded soldiers. Thieves and rascals don't build such things.
In the cities of the Atlantic coast this summer, they built floating
hospitals, great ships, and took the little children from the
sub-cellars and narrow, dirty streets of New York city, where the
Democratic party is the strongest--took these poor waifs and put them in
these great hospitals out at sea, and let the breezes of ocean kiss the
rose of health back to their pallid cheeks. Rascals and thieves do not
do so. When Chicago burned, railroads were blocked with the charity of
the American people. Thieves and rascals did not do so.