Benjamin Rush Davenport

“ Let the people bear in mind the peace, the happiness, and the prosperity they now enjoy. When anxiety and unrest come, as they speedily would, with the renewed agitation in the next Congress, of an attack upon our protective tariff; when the spindles of our mills are silent, the forges black with ashes, our looms yellow with rust, and unemployed men clamor here as they are clamoring to-day in the streets of London and Lancashire against the reduction of wages, let them listen to the plausible excuses and fine-spun prevarications of the Free Trade tariff reformers, who will be responsible. ”

“ The South sought by secession to absolve itself from the domination of the masses. It was like the patricians of Rome seeking the Sacred Hill to build a new city. It failed, as will ever the minority, representing a false idea of American society and a false conception of the spirit with which every American is imbued, do in the future. But, be it said to the credit of the believers in aristocracy in 1860, that they had the courage of their convictions, and they fought a manly battle to establish that which is impossible in America. ”

“ The proposition to hold such an exhibition as the feeding of the poor children in Madison Square Garden was in itself an insult to every American citizen. Imagine, fair lady, as you loll in your carriage drawn by your high-priced bays on Fifth avenue, how pleasant it would be to have your little curled and perfumed darling, left at home under the watchful eye of some imported French bonne, exhibited as a freak in a dime museum. Think of the tears that should be shed on a mother’s bosom, being paraded before the public as an object of amusement. ”

“ Until the overthrow of the Third Napoleon and the establishment of a republic in France, nowhere else in Europe did the American feel himself so much at home as in Switzerland; and to those rugged mountaineers of the Alps is due the credit of keeping alive the spirit of liberty almost submerged beneath the flood of monarchical ideas which inundated Europe. Every republic on earth, and each republican, should feel indebted to little Switzerland that the fire of freedom was not entirely extinguished. ”

“ Russia is a veritable blot upon the civilization of the nineteenth century. She furnishes an example of all that was horrible under the old monarchical governments of Europe. Russia’s social life is honeycombed with anarchy, nihilism, and hatred. Beneath the surface, made smooth by military despotism, there burns the fierce fires of inextinguishable hatred. The people are deprived of those rights and liberties enjoyed by the citizens of even those monarchical governments by which Russia is surrounded, curtailed though those privileges may appear to the free American citizen. ”

“ Had the worshipers at the shrine of “caste,” and supposed social superiority, reserved their devotions to some secluded chapel, they might have worshiped in peace at the feet of the tinseled god whom they adore—“caste.” The American people tolerate almost any kind of “ism” for a time, provided the “ism” be not paraded before them, and flaunted in their faces in an insulting manner; but a determined people are the citizens of this nation, and when once aroused to a sense of outrage, they throw to the winds all consideration of law, danger, and consequence. ”

“ In America, there being but one class, those who assume to imitate the manners of the immoral, to carouse and debauch, render themselves obnoxious to the mass of the people, and that political party which becomes identified in the minds of the people with any set, or “caste,” possessing such distorted principles, becomes correspondingly objectionable. There can be but one law of morals in America. Debauchery, drunkenness, and dishonesty, though sheltered by a palace, are as odoriferous to the senses of the people as the polluted air from a sewer. ”

“ When you have formed those hirelings into a private army to do your bidding against the lives of your fellow citizens, is it not late in the day for you to call up ‘the Spirit of the Republic’? You have gloated in triumph over your victories and the wants of the people. You have seen us surrounded by starvation and destitution. You, professing Christianity, have made us objects of your contempt and insult. Our daughters have not been safe from the contaminating gaze of your weak, puerile progeny. You have adopted crests, castes, social distinctions, sham aristocracy. ”

“ It was not much: it was rank presumption; it was nonsense, absurd. “There’s no such thing possible in America as class distinction; in fact, it does not exist, cannot exist; the ‘Four Hundred’ of New York is a joke, a by-word, a stupendous folly.”
But, good people of the said “Four Hundred,” remember that while the American is neither a Socialist nor an Anarchist, when you presume to make a distinction, socially, between the poor man, his wife, children, and mother, you touch him in the most sensitive part of his being. ”

“ Thoughts of you and sweet memories of the past, as dear even to the poorest woman as to the Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India, make Democrats of the hard-worked, poor old wife and mother in the little farmhouse of Illinois and Indiana. There is no scene in Grover Cleveland’s career to-day so embalmed in the hearts of the people as that wherein he is described as refusing to talk politics with one of the political satellites that ever hover round planets of the political firmament, putting them aside that he might watch the tottering footsteps of baby Ruth. ”

“ Be warned in time; you and yours have wealth, luxury, influence, and obedience upon the part of those you dominate. You have all that wealth will buy—villas at Newport, yachts, palaces. You revel in banquets, balls, and glittering assemblages. The poor man’s home is illuminated alone by the light shed by honor. He who would steal or deprive him of that one light, takes all from him that makes his life worth the living. The poor man’s honor is the honor of his wife and children. Your immoralities have increased, like appetite, by what they fed upon. ”

“ As John Stuart Mill said of ancient Rome: “When inequality of wealth once commences in a community not constantly engaged in repairing, by industry, the injuries of fortune, its advances are gigantic; the great masses swallow up the smaller. The Roman Empire ultimately became covered with the vast landed possessions of a comparatively few families, for whose luxury, and still more for whose ostentation, the most costly products were raised, while the cultivators of the soil were slaves or small tenants in a nearly servile condition.” ”

“ It is impossible to increase the internal revenue tax to supply the deficiency. Then, if the Democratic party believes in lower duties and decreased tariff, what other course is open for it? What other course is fair to the poor “Common People” of America than to pass an income tax to supply the needs of the nation? It is perfectly useless to talk about abolishing the pensions to any amount sufficient to create any perceptible impression upon the decrease in the income of the nation, should the tariff be materially reduced. It is utterly worthless to argue the subject. ”

“ Do not leave the future generations, who will rule the destinies of this nation, to be the [Pg 140] offspring of foreigners; forego your balls, receptions, entertainments, and your trips to Europe; endure the inconvenience and annoyance of the nursery. Let us have some American children born. The prattle of the baby’s tongue will be sweeter music to your ear than the lisping flattery of some foreign duke. You may have the honor of being a mother of some future Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Lincoln, Garfield, Cleveland. ”

“ Carnegie and Mr. Frick are proofs that in the ranks of labor itself there is intelligence to direct. Many Carnegies and many Fricks would spring up to-morrow if opportunity permitted. If one would study the justice of a system of political economy, let him surrender his vested rights of property and take his place among those whom the system crushes, whose labor it devours, and whose reward for labor is a bare, joyless existence. We who have the money can reason speciously regarding the justice of our laws, the excellence of our system of government. ”

“ The people have entrusted Grover Cleveland with the executive power of the nation. At his hands they will expect the righting of those wrongs which these petty tyrants, sham aristocrats, believers in social distinction and “caste,” have inflicted upon the people. They have chosen representatives in Congress who control both branches of the legislature, through whom the people shall express their will and pleasure; and the people will expect of Grover Cleveland, as they did of Abraham Lincoln, Jackson, and Jefferson, the execution of their wishes. ”

“ It abases itself in such a disgusting manner before that peerage of Great Britain, as to cause feelings of indignation and contempt to arise in the bosoms of the descendants of those old Continental soldiers, who, more than a hundred years ago, said to Great Britain and her aristocracy: “We have had enough of you. This shall be a land of freedom, equality, and liberty; though it should cost the last drop of blood in our veins.” ”

“ I choose to ask this question as a reductio ad absurdum, in the hope that it will cause my own class, who have power and authority, to stop and reflect that perhaps it will be best to concede something in the way of law, to regulate this one-sided distribution of wealth, lest it should be regulated through bloodshed, or, what is more horrible still, should throw into power, through sheer brute force, elements which will bring our Republic to anarchy. ”

“ The victory does mean putting a stop to the riot of extravagance, profligacy, and corruption. It means the end of the reign of Plutocracy. It means relief from the monstrous robbery of the masses by unjust and unnecessary taxation. It means a veto upon the looting of the Treasury and the hideous waste of hundreds—nay, thousands—of millions of dollars in the course of a generation by unmerited pensions. It does mean lower and juster taxes and larger freedom of trade. It does mean good money, and good money only.
“Our party has triumphed under the happy union of a great issue and a great man. ”

“ I do not think very much of Anarchistic ideas, or of the theories of the Socialist, nor of the golden promises made by Weaver and the People’s party. No human being can ever make a paradise out of this world, and at no one time will everyone in it be satisfied and happy. This nation of ours has grown so rapidly, and there are so many foreigners here who have become citizens, and we print so many cheap and silly books, that I am not surprised that the Republican party was defeated. If a party of angels had made up the Government, the result would have been just the same. ”

“ You know that each child is but the coming American man or woman. You would make a Roman holiday to exhibit the necessities of the People, who are your rulers. Delightful entertainment for the exclusive “Four Hundred,”—to sit around with their many millions and gaze at the ravenous appetites exhibited by the children of the poor. It was a holiday like the holidays in Rome, when the nobles assembled to see the persecuted Christians torn and mangled by every form of beast that, by research, could be brought to the Roman arena. ”

“ We have been Republicans, we, the “Common People,” until the party for which we voted in 1860, and which, under the leadership of that great Commoner, Abraham Lincoln, forever silenced the claim of the Southerner to social superiority. We have been good Republicans until you have fostered and aggravated the ulcerous sore of a sham aristocracy, defiling the healthy and vigorous body of the Republican party. You may [Pg 402] have the best of the argument on Protection; it may benefit our pocketbooks, but we are not selling our birthright, the equality of man, for a mess of pottage! ”

“ Poor men! Let the commiseration of the masses go forth. These gentlemen, who are accredited with the possession of millions, and [Pg 423] who, when they die, find themselves suddenly possessed of the millions with which they are accredited by the public, are poor men while they live, and have to pay taxes!
Right you are, New York Sun; an income tax would lead to perjury! Of course, not upon the part of the gentlemen named—for “Brutus was an honorable man”—but we will agree with you, after reading this schedule, that an income tax would lead to perjury. ”

“ Rome, once the mistress of the world, retained her grandeur only so long as the principles of true democracy pulsated through her body politic and nerved her every action. When prosperity, corruption, and abuse blinded the rulers to the claims of the Plebeians, then came revolution, civil war, decline, and finally the fall of the proudest empire known in the history of man. ”

“ A man of intelligence, education, or wealth, who is a Democrat, becomes a social anomaly in that little community. A few prominent men through the land, who have become associated with the Democratic party, are spoken of merely as the result of inherited opinions through a long line of ancestry, similar to an inherited religion, or a motto on a coat-of-arms. A man who believes in Democracy, in its broad sense, is regarded in these little communities, when he is possessed of education, intelligence, and money, as a kind of firebrand. ”

“ The American regards England with more than kindly eyes. Her history has been the history of our race. The sterling valor of the Englishman early made itself felt in the demands made by him upon the reluctant kings who ruled him. At no time in the history of Great Britain, from the Norman Conquest, had the peasantry and “Common People” been submerged as completely by the power of the privileged classes as has been the case in France, and, in fact, as in all of continental Europe. ”