Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1879 — The Meddlesome School of Politics. [ARTICLE]

The Meddlesome School of Politics.

I belong to that school in government which believes it is best to mind your own business and let other people do the same as to theirs. I belong to that school of politics which trusts the people of the United States under their various political organizations. I belong to that school of politics which believes that the*people of a State have certain duties that you cannot limit here, and that they are competent to perform them, and I believe in their virtue and their intelligence to discharge them. The Senator from Maine belongs to that meddlesome school which is never happy except in some missionary colporteur enterprise, going abroad to correct people’s morals and politics a long ways from home. The Senator from Maine is disturbed about the people of South Carolina, much disturbed about the people of Louisiana. I am not. There is the difference between us. I believe that the people who have sent the two Senators from South Carolina to this body are as competent, in their intelligence, their virtue, and their patriotism, to regulate their own affairs according to the highest standard of civilized morality, as the people of Maine or the people of Indiana. I have faith in the American people. All the people of this country are my countrymen. The trouble with the Senator from Maine and those who train with him on the other side of the Chamber is that they have a deep distrust, that they have had a long hatred, they have had a long acrimonious spell of political hatred toward the people of the South. It is not possible for them to trust that people; and however well-behaved and disposed the people of the South may be, however upright in their motives, however determined to disarm hostile criticism, they may sit up nights, spend sleepless nights as well as vigilant days to show the propriety of their conduct, it will not disarm criticism on that side of the Chamber, it will not disarm distrust, because the political party represented by the Senator from Maine feeds, thrives, prospers, grows fat, and spreads its branches broad and wide on every trouble and every speck of lawlessness that occurs under the Southern sky. You deceive nobody. I have for years in the other end of this Capitol seen the Republican party build itself up upon disturbances alleged, sometimes real, but most often unreal, throughout the South; and it would be contrary to human nature if the leaders of the Republican party had not sent, as they often have, their emissaries, those carpet-baggers, to stir up strife between the two races down there because of the political capital that it would bring to the Republican party in the North. Consequently the Senator from Maine distrusts the people of South Carolina, and wants thirty-eight States to rush down and take charge of their affairs. He distrusts the people represented so well upon this floor by the Senator from Louisiana in my rear (Mr. Jonas), and he wants to spread his broad mantle of care, parental guardianship and protection over them. Mr. President, that was not the Government our fathers made. I say here on this floor that that was not the Government that the fathers made when they framed this constitution. They made a Government and allotted its powers to different localities, trusted the people to carry out and discharge their duties under these powers in good faith, and the trouble with that side of the Chamber is that that lesson of our Government has escaped them, and they have had their hands on the necks of the Southern people and they are reluctant ever to withdraw them. I think I have answered the Senator from Maine whether he and I and the rest of the States shall gather around and preclaim a protectorate over the people of any other State. When the people of a State, if such a thing should happen, become outlawed from civilized government, that raises a different question. But while their State is represented on this floor, while all the machinery of the State Government is in operation smoothly and harmoniously, no greater outrage, according to my notions of government, can be proposed than for us to invade their local affairs and tear from them the control of their own matters. —Hon. D. W. Voorhees in the U. S. Senate.