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Thursday September 22, 1904
Denver, Colorado - State Democratic Party Nominates Alva Adams for Governor
Fellow Citizens: I need not assure you that I appreciate to its full this distinguished compliment. It is perhaps the greatest tribute that any man has received at the hands of a Democratic convention. But I am sincere when I tell you that I wish this cup might have passed by me; that the mantle might have fallen on other shoulders.
But the call has come and I must lay aside my personal preferences, my business interests, my home life, that I may respond to your call, which is a demand that I can not refuse. What the campaign is to bring forth no man can tell. If defeat is to come to me it is but an incident in my life and none, perhaps will mourn except myself. But if defeat comes to the principles that I am to carry in this campaign, then calamity falls upon the state of Colorado. It is your battle, as Senator Teller has told you. I will do my part the best I can, but the 30,000 Democrats who did not go to the polls two years ago must vote and determine this election. There can be no absent treatment. You can not put ballots into the box by prayer. Every citizen of this state who believes in what we believe in must work and sacrifice and go to the polls and cast his ballot. If that is done, and honestly done, then, whatever be the result, I shall abide by it, because an honest election is the voice of the people, and I shall submit, it matters not whether it is defeat or victory.
This afternoon a Republican friend of mine told me that he wished I would take this nomination. I asked him why, and he said "because we must have this election. Peabody must be elected, it matters not at what cost. We have all the money we want, and if necessary, can buy one-half of Colorado."
This is a challenge of your ability, but I have faith in the purity, the patriotism of Colorado manhood and womanhood, which I have known for thirty-four years, to believe that they will rebuke that sentiment and not indorse the sentiment that money is everything.
There is something more than money. It is principle. There is something higher than cash. It is manhood and womanhood.
I believe that at the next election the ballots of the people of Colorado will be a flame of fire of indignation that will consume the tabernacles of bribery.
No, money answereth not to all. If I thought it did, I would leave the state of Colorado. I want to say to you, my friends, that if elected governor that the governor of this state will be guided by the law. When a preacher or priest tries to enforce the doctrines of the Ten Commandments, he must in his own life be an example of those doctrines.
The law must be enforced.
There is not one law for one and another law for another. I have never read in any statute book or constitution that preference was to be given to property or person.
I believe that the courts of law are competent to right every legal wrong.
The law stands for the high and the low, and every citizen of this state is entitled to its protection.
I believe there is no conflict between the citizens of this state that can not find a way of being righted before the courts of law.
If I have a political creed, I find that creed in the first inaugural of Thomas Jefferson, written 100 years ago. It applies to Colorado, as it applied then. It is new today, and yet old, because it is as new and old as human liberty. The sentiment that he described is Democracy itself. His definition stood for freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of the individual under the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. It stood for the subserviency of the military to the civil power, the right of trial by jury honestly selected. This is Jeffersonian Democracy, and it embodies the principles upon which I expect to stand and administer the affairs of Colorado.
I have but one desire, and that is that when I enter official life I shall give every energy I possess, every hour that comes to me, every day of the two years which I put in at the capitol, to support by law the rights of the individual to liberty, and to make an economical administration of the finances of this state.
These, my friends, are the sentiments to which I subscribe—to support the law, to give an honest administration and to make a fair use of the taxes of the people. And with these sentiments upon my banner, under that banner I will go. I will treat every citizen, whether he voted for me or whether he did not, as an equal before the law, as one having the same rights as every other citizen. There can be no distinction. To these things I consecrate myself, without thought of future preferment or personal ambition; with no purpose but to serve the people of Colorado, and to bring back a Democratic government and a government by the people in the capitol on yonder hill. (Great applause.)
[emphasis added]