people that as men in high place they may prostitute their official power for private gain, and then lie about it, and then baffle investigation by refusing to have their “private business” inquired into, and then be exposed by their own showing, and have all this known by the American people, and still be elected Presidents of the United States? Where will our public morals be if the American people by this election proclaim that in their opinion these practices are “all right,” and that the man who has conspicuously indulged in them is just the man to be distinguished and exalted as the great representative American with a big A?
If you want to know what the result of Mr. Blaine's election would be, stop and observe what the result of his mere nomination already has been. What do you see? Men high in standing, who but yesterday were shocked at such things as Mr. Blaine has done, who thought that the people would and ought to brand them with their emphatic disapproval, now meekly apologizing for the same things and dismissing them as little eccentricities of genius. Nay, some of them grow fairly facetious at the “Pharisees,” or “saints,” or “dudes,” or “gentle hermits” who denounce corruption to-day as they themselves denounced it yesterday. Indeed, “Pharisees” and “saints.” What, then, are the strange and extravagant things which these Pharisees and saints demand, and which after Mr. Blaine's nomination have suddenly become so ridiculous? Do they ask that a candidate for the Presidency should be the ideal man and the embodiment of all the human virtues? That he should part his hair in the middle and wear lavender gloves? No, not that. But these strange creatures, these “Pharisees” and “dudes,” insist that a man to be elected President of the United States should be a man of integrity; that he should have a just sense of official
