The Republican party, of course, is not responsible for this. The Republican candidate, Benjamin Harrison, than whom there is no better example of a patriotic, earnest, honest American, Christian, father, husband, son, gentleman, and soldier, is worthy to be an example to the young men of our country. He was not responsible for the impression made by this excrescence that has grown like some hideous and poisonous fungus upon the stalwart oak planted by Abraham Lincoln. The decay has arisen from this polluting attachment. The McKinley Bill and Protection, while possessing many points of excellence it behooves the country to examine with care before erasing from the statute-books, are not responsible for the natural animosity of the people toward this child, deformed, misshapen, Sham Aristocracy, clinging to the skirts of the Republican party. The attack was upon this hideous tumor, and, by its amputation by the people, the life-blood of the Republican party has become exhausted; for the operation necessarily was made painful, deep-felt, and severe. The Democratic party derived all the benefit from the defeat of the Republican party, at the hands of the people, without having contributed thereto to any amazing extent.
The result of the election of 1892 should be as the warning written on the wall was to Belshazzar. The rich must understand, and learn now in time, that they hold their lives, their liberty, and their property in this Republic only by the will of the people; that the people, Democratic always in the broad sense of democracy, are long-suffering; but retribution, as surely as night doth follow day, may come, if this warning be not heeded, in some more terrible shape than an overwhelming defeat, at the polls, of that party to which the rich attach themselves. It is not well to flaunt riches or claim privileges or “caste” before the face of a free people.
It would be well for the rich to learn this lesson. It was taught by the people under the name of the Republican party when they elected Lincoln; under the name of the Democratic party when they elected Andrew Jackson; under the name of the Democratic party when they elected Thomas Jefferson. It was taught to rich and powerful England when she lost a continent in 1776; it was taught to Anglo-Saxon England when Charles I. lost his head; it was taught to France when the long-suffering peasantry and poor broke down the barriers of “caste,” and flooded her fair fields with the tide of blood.