The Daily Gazette

"COLD WATER DID IT"
Nothing else had such an influence
on the Ohio election as cold water,
thinks the Times, which says
"There is no room for doubt that
much of the gain made by the Demo-
cracy in Ohio is due to the pronounced
position taken by the Republican party
in favor of temperance legislation.
The party includes the great mass of
the voters of the State who are engaged
in the temperance movement. It also
includes a great many Germans who
oppose and despise the temperance
movement. The temperance plank in
the platform retained the former, who
might have bolted if it had not been
put in, and lost us the latter. This was
one cause, and a very powerful cause
for the change which the election shows
has taken place."
Cold water is manifestly a danger-
ous element, useful mainly for naviga-
tion, but there are a few issues besides
cold water which have had something
to do with the recent rout of Radical-
ism and Grantism. There is the scan-
dal and disgrace that the whole South
should be kept under the iron heels of
Grant and his man Friday, alias Lan-
daulet Williams, and the stories of mur-
der, rapine, and outrage, manufactured
to order by such creatures as Hays, of
Alabama, and vouched for by such
trustworthy statesmen as Centennial
Hawley, have not inspired the people
with confidence in Radicalism. A free
people do not delight to contemplate
the miserable state of affairs in Louisi-
ana.
Even the Netherlands. under Alba,
and his master Philip the Fourth were
less plundered and less ruined than
have been Louisiana and South Caro-
lina under Grant and his agents, Moscs
and Kellogg. These facts are stronger
than cold water, and they assert them-
themselves at the polls. Under Republican
rule, corruption for the last five years
has like a pest, been stalking about the
land in open sunshine. Butler had his
Secretary of the Treasury. his Assis-
tant Secretary, his. detectives preying
upon the commerce of the country, in
Richardson, Sawyer, Jayne, and San-
borne: merchants were blackmailed in
hundreds of thousands of dollars, un-
der the faint pretext of law, and the
spoils were divided.
The revenues of the Government, as
in the case of the Sanborn robbery,
were farmed out to be collected at the
rate of 50 per cent. profit-a swindle
and robbery that was only equalled a
hundred years ago in France, and led
to the great French Revolution. World.