Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1879 — POLITICAL NOTES. [ARTICLE]

POLITICAL NOTES.

Daniel Webster delivered an oration on the completion of the Bunker Hill monument that almost lifted his vast audience from the ground. Every sentiment uttered by him evoked the most heartfelt applause. Without comment we submit a single paragraph from this grand oration: “If men would enjoy the blessings of republican government they must govern themselves by reason, by mutual counsel and consultation, by a sense and feeling of general interest, and by the acquiescence of the minority in the will of the majority, properly expressed; and, above all, the military must be kept, according to the language of our bill of rights, in strict subordination to the civil authority. Wherever this lesson is not learned and practiced there can be no political freedom. Absurd, preposterous is it, a scoff and a satire on free forms of constitutional liberty, for frames of government to be prescribed by military leaders and the right of suffrage to be exercised at the point of the sword.” The Albany Argus has an article in regard to Blaine which contains much more truth than poetry. We copy its conclusion: “There is no man in the United States who is so much distrusted. There is no man who is regarded with so much interest. The people look on him as one who has flung character to the winds, andxhey are curious to see how far and how long he can get on without character or without even the pretense of character. He is fond of taunting rebels, but they have him at a disadvantage; they never stole anything. He is fond of taunting rebels, but they have him at a disadvantage; they had real convictions. He is fond of taunting rebels, but they have him at a disadvantage; they put up their lives and all for the things they believed, and, going into public life poor, emerged poorer and without dishonor. He is fond of taunting rebels, but they have him at an advantage; nobody believes they are for sale. He is fond of taunting rebels, but they have him at a disadvantage; nobody says, * They are smart, but no dependence can be placed on them.’ A performer without conscience or respect, Mr. Blaine is the most brilliant exponent of the venality of a venal party in a venal age, and that is all he is.”

The issues on which the Republican managers have elected to go to the country, says the Washington Post, would not be changed in any particular if submitted for revision to the shrewdest politicians in the Democratic party. “The people will be asked to decide whether the Democratic republic which the fathers founded shall continue, or a centralized despotism be erected on its ruins. That is the sum of all the issues, and it stands out in such bold relief that it cannot be disguised. If systematized and statutory packing of juries is to annul the right of trial by jury, if the civil power is to be permanently relegated to a position subordinate to the military arm of the Government, if the Department of Justice and the vaults of the treasury are to be placed at the disposal of campaign committees, to furnish men and means to control elections —if all or any of these abominations are to be engrafted, as permanent features, on our system of government, the work of the fathers will be destroyed, and the most odious of all despotisms will take the place of constitutional government. In arrang ing these issues the Republican managers show their estimate of the intelligence and patriotism of the voting masses. It would be as reasonable to expect the black men of the United States to vote themselves back into slavery as it is to call on the white men to vote away their fundamental rights, and brand the republic as a failure. The sophistries which Republican orators have woven in intricate webs and hung around the ugly facts of the situation will be of no avail. The gleam of the bayonet and the mailed hand of tyranny are not to be thus hidden. The unerring instinct of the people could be trusted if they were far less intelligent than they are.” Senator Thurman, in the debate on the bill to repeal the jurors’ test oath, paid his respects to Conkling in this fashion: “We know that the jury laws as they now exist are used for partisan purposes. We know that as they are administered they are a disgrace to the so-called administration of justice. We are in dead earnest that that evil shall be remedied, even if it be necessary to suffer the mortification of the taunts of the Senator from New York. I hope we can survive plenty of that kind of medicine. Even if it be necessary to do that, we as practical men are willing to see that mere sophistry at this end of the avenue shall not be re-echoed from the other end of the avenue. That is all there is of it. If the Senator from New Yjrk thinks that God has crowned him with such surpassing intellect, and that the study of the law has made him the very embodiment of the code of Justinian, Coke’s Institutes, all the English statutes, and the American statutes, too, that he has breakfasted on Blackstone’s Commentaries, taken lunch on Kent, dined on Story, and taken as a slight refection before he retired to bed John Marshall’s decisions, let him live in that happy atmosphere of selfesteem ; I will not attempt in the slightest degree to mar one single particle of his self-satisfaction. I even agree that he may loom over me, a much older lawyer than he is, like one of those genii in the “ Arabian Nights,” who,when the cork was taken out of the bottle, rose out, away up to the clouds, to the utter amazement and astonishment of all beholders. Let it be so as long, as he pleases, but he shall not prevent me as a practical legislator from attempting to remove the pebbles that he throws in my path when I have a march to make.” The Boston Post says: “The next Presidency is not to be contested on the Ohio idea, the New England idea or the Southern idea, but upon a fundamental,national idea which will overpower all others. The country will insist that there shad be a free ballot, that the people shall not be cowed by Federal soldiers or United States Marshals, but that the sovereigns, not their servants, shall rule. They will demand, too, that full and fair expression shall be given

to the liallot after it has been cast without being counted out by infamous Returning Boards or the decrees of Electoral Commissions. These two things go hand in hand. Free elections and full force to the popular will, as determined thereby, will constitute the battle cry of the next campaign. All minor issues will have to give way. Facts and circumstances are more potent than party leaders, and will brush aside all attempts to avoid or change the real issue. The untrammeled right of the people to elect their own rulers was wantonly invaded in 1876. The machinery under which it was done then the Democrats now insist shall be given up. The party which by its use succeeded in then thwarting the popular will refuse to surrender it, and threaten to stop the wheels of the Government if they cannot be allowed to retain it. Whatever the result may be at this session, and whatever turn things may take at Washington, the real isshe is one for the people, and they alone can settle it. Congress will do little more than make up the case. The people have got to settle it at the polls. Collateral questions, however important, will have to bide their time. The Ohio idea will have to stand aside. So with all sectional issues. The Republicans cannot force Southern questions into the foreground should they attempt it. The Southern people have none to push forward, and no disposition to bring them to the front if they had.”