The Seattle Post Intelligencer

NO REPUBLICANS WANTED.
For some weeks past the people of Atlanta, Georgia, have been preparing for their annual 'Chautauqua,' and, as the preparations this year were on an unusually large scale, advantage was taken of the occasion to invite a number of prominent men and women to attend and address the meetings.
Upon Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution and chairman of the executive committee, devolved the duty of issuing invitations. After consultation with the members of the committee, it was decided to invite Speaker Carlisle and Representative William McKinley to be present, the first because he is a gentleman of prominence and national reputation, and the second because he is one of the most conspicuous figures on the Republican side of the house, and withal a statesman, orator and scholar.
The invitations were prepared and forwarded to Senator Colquitt and Representative Stewart of Georgia, with the request that they be delivered. Speaker Carlisle received his, but that intended for Mr. McKinley was returned to Mr. Grady with the assurance that they did not care to deliver it. Senator Colquitt, in a reply to an inquiry as to his motive in this action, said: 'Mr. McKinley is a Republican, and we don't want him to preach any of his ideas to our people,' and in the same strain Mr. Stewart remarked: 'We believed that it was not best to invite a Republican to address our people. He would not agree with us, and his presence would be sure to stir up ill feeling and strife. We have nothing against McKinley personally, but we don't want any Republicans in our country.'
These sentiments have the old Southern ring in them. The expression of just such views as these is what keeps up the old 'ill-feeling and strife.' One object in inviting Mr. McKinley to be present was that his presence would offset any political effect that might be drawn from invitation to so thorough and uncompromising a Democrat and tariff reformer as Speaker Carlisle. This was eminently and altogether politic, and it will be applauded by the progressive South.
The old bigoted and narrow minded Bourbons, however, cannot get over their dislike for everything from the other side of the Mason and Dixon line. The desire for isolation and non-intercourse still clings to them. They nourish yet the ancient supleton of an one from the North, and they dread a rattlesnake of the Georgia under brush far less than the spread of Northern ideas.
Mr. McKinley is too much of a gentleman to carry his politics with him into a Chautauqua assembly, and had he been called upon to speak, he would doubtless have made no political allusions in the whole course of his address. It is a fine reflection on the intelligence and common sense of the true South though, to have two representatives from it two progressive state make use of such illiberal and petty partisan expressions as 'We don't want him to preach any of his ideas to our people,' or 'We don't want any Republicans in our country.' When a party or sect attempts to avoid an honest investigation of its teachings, it is quite certain there is something fundamentally wrong in them, and when a people attempt to erect barriers in order to exclude strangers from their midst and to prevent free speech and the utterance of new ideas they are taking a step backward and relapsing into the civilization of the middle ages.