the rest of the year the people are busy about their own affairs, and have neither the leisure nor the inclination to be scrutinizing the conduct of their public servants. A responsibility to many is practically a responsibility to none. Now you all know that in battling with the cankerworm, it is around the stem of the tree that we apply our preventives, because that is the highway by which the grubs climb to lay their eggs. The eggs once laid there is no remedy. The stem by which our political grubs have gone up to deposit the germs of devastation has been our primary meetings and conventions, the adroit management of which has too often given us candidates without that self-respect which makes men responsible to their own conscience, and without that respect for the better sentiment of the country which might spring from the fear of lost repute and diminished consideration. They fear no loss of what they never had. The discontented class of which I have spoken are resolved to make candidates feel their responsibility at the polls, the only point at which they are sensitive. I confess that I share largely in the feeling that leads them to this determination. “I am and have been in sympathy with the principles of the Republican party as I understand them, but it has no sacredness for me when it degenerates into a contrivance for putting unfit men or tainted men into office, and for making them ‘Honorable’ by courtesy who are not so by character. When a party becomes an organization to serve only its own private ends, when it becomes a mere means of livelihood or distinction on easier terms than God for our good has prescribed, it has become noxious instead of useful. Now, fellow-citizens, it cannot be denied that the Republican party has suffered by too long and too easy a tenure of office. We ought to be thankful to its opponents for the investigations which have shown us its weak points. Let it never be said that we object to any investigation of character. Let it always be said that we object to men who need or fear to be investigated. “It will not do to appeal to the past history and achievements of the party. The greatest of poets and one of the wisest of men has said that-- ‘to have done is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.’