The Tarborough Southerner

Party Duty-Application to Journalism.

We regret to see the course of the Baltimore Gazette, one of the leading Democratic journals of the country, in regard to the speakership of the next House of Representatives.

Because that paper does not concur with Hon. S. J. Randall on the currency question, it assails him most vigorously for the purpose of depreciating his claims and diminishing his chances for the nomination of speaker by the Democratic Congress. We do not object to the Gazette urging the claims of its favorite, but we think it both imprudent and impolitic for a leading Democratic newspaper to wage an unnecessary and unrelenting warfare upon prominent members of its own political household.

Mr. Randall is a gentleman of high character and decided ability, and has always shown himself a strong generous, unswerving friend of the South. As a parliamentarian he proved himself without a peer in the last Congress. That he should be criticised and denounced by the Gazette because that paper prefers another for speaker is unfair, unjust and reprehensible.

The Democratic party cannot afford these bickerings, and it is the imperative duty of its leading journals to frown down and deprecate the cropping out of personal bitterness, animosities and dissensions. No paper deserves the countenance and support of the party that will not advocate and enforce the duty of party discipline.

We need harmony and must have it in our ranks. We cannot afford to fritter away our strength by quarrels among ourselves. It is suicidal to attempt to strike down those in our own ranks because there are others, whose promotion we desire.

The Gazette was, until the Ohio election, an able ally in the cause of Democracy and good government; but when it hurls its shafts of abuse and detraction at such men as Samuel J. Randall, the blows recoil upon itself and upon the party it professes to serve.

It is conceded that Mr. Randall is the strongest candidate for the nomination, and the probabilities are decidedly in favor of his election. Then we will have the spectacle of a leading southern journal at war with the Democratic speaker of Congress!

Let there be a truce to the mad policy of personal warfare. We cannot afford to be divided. Defeat inevitably awaits us without unity of action and purpose. Let the united voice of the Press ring out for harmony.