Staunton Vindicator

The polite but positive way in which the Republican Clubs which met in Cleveland, Ohio, last week, declined to enter into the pitfall President Cleveland and his Democratic friends had prepared for Republicans, seems to have disgusted them.—Virginia Enterprise.

Our Republican cotemporary needs to be posted on what is going on in his own party. The "pitfall" was prepared by President Tracy, who presided at the meeting of the Republican Clubs. In his opening speech he said that the "value of these conventions" lay in the fact that they enabled the Republican party to "face squarely to the front and fear not to take up and consider any and all of the complex questions which confront us from time to time." Mr. Tracy must have been surprised when a few hours later he beheld the convention dodging the "complex questions" which it was expected to "face squarely" and running, with its tail between its legs, from the pitfall which he had prepared. How does the Enterprise account for this other "pitfall" into which the same body fell at Denver last year much to the satisfaction of the free silver Dubois:

"We believe in the use of gold and silver as money metals, maintained on a perfect parity and interconvertibility. We do not believe that there will be a permanent return of prosperity to our country until the full use and highest position of silver shall be restored, and we favor such legislation as will bring about this result."

The artful "President Cleveland and his Democratic friends," doubtless our neighbor thinks, dug that pitfall into which the Republican Clubs fell at Denver. The fact is that the Republican party, which until the last few months had every prospect of success in the next Presidential campaign, does not know what to do with the currency. With it, between the free silver and sound money men, it is "good lord" and "good devil" without knowing which to turn to. It seeks refuge in dead silence on silver and strident denunciation of tariff, though it knows that it will not touch a line of the tariff if it were to carry the whole government next year.