JOHN THINKINGMACHINE DISCLOSES HIS POLITICS IN A LETTER TO A POPULAR AND NATIONAL PREACHER, REV. Z. Y. X. "For unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Prince of Peace." -[Isaiah ix: 6. ST. LOUIS, October 3, 1880. Dear Sir: As you have seen, Judge Thinkingmachine has completed the decennium of his arrival, and now is ready for business. May he dabble in politics? What is first in order? To begin at home, the national mail-carrier will lay before you the latest four consecutive numbers of a political and mercantile newspaper, whose editorials and paragraphs show the genius and character of Western Democracy. St. Louis is both a Democratic and a Republican city. It is also both Catholic and Protestant. It is inland, and, through its river, almost seacoast. It is manufacturing, mining, farming, trading. It is an American city, with elements of German, French, Spanish, Italian, Bohemian, Africian. It is a city at once Southern and Northern, Western and Eastern. These articles show fine writing, skilful advocating, calm behavior, thoughtful courage, firm determination,― good qualities all; but judgment must decide whether their application is good or bad, their use truthful or mendacious. General Grant says the Republican party is a national party. The Democracy answers, "It is not now, nor ever was, a national party. It was originally founded upon a purely sectional issue, and neither Fremont in 1856, nor Lincoln in 1860, received the vote of a single Southern State." So much the worse for the Southern States. The sectional" issue was, that slavery is wrong; the national one, impliedly, being that it was right. The Republican party is national because it embodies. ideas and takes measures, which, on universal principles, work the greatest good to any nation and all its citizens. Its opponent is national because it happens to be voted for, more or less, in all sections. may as fairly suggest the liberality of the North and proscription of the South, as the nationality of Democratic tenets and the sectionalism of Republican doctrines. Which In the article, "Are We a Nation?" we read: "Senator Conkling's speech in New York is founded very largely on the assumption that we are not a nation, but a league of communities, in which not the majority of votes but the preponderance of wealth should govern." Is not this the doctrine of "State rights" and the record of slaveocracy, now found erroneous and odious to the people, speciously charged upon the North? and the virtue of harmonized national and popular sovereignity claimed for the South? The sentences of these articles glitter with precise reversals of the truth. In another place it was Democratic wisdom and virtue in legislation which accomplished resumption. So it is the Republican party which proposes to pay all Southern claims, and the Democratic party which will stop every cent, including pay to Union soldiers from Southern States. When the war seems popular, it is claimed that the Democratic party put down the rebellion; while in another connection, Lincoln's administration and the war is set down as simply a chapter of incompetency, folly, and crime. And so on throughout. The ignorant reader will read and believe without trouble; the Democratic voter will accept conviction without going through the logic of it; and the patriotic Gully Bros. of Kemper County, and national reputation, will kill more enemies of their country. This running book of four days is a magnificent perversion of facts after their general admission to history. The author learns our truth and falsely turns it against us. Let us learn his art and truly turn it against him. This Missouri editor, who writes with such remarkable fluency, does so under the advantage which any |