Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1879 — THE NATIONAL AUTHORITY. [ARTICLE]

THE NATIONAL AUTHORITY.

f From the Cincinnati Enquirer.] The Republicans of Congress, tho Republican in the White House, the Republican newspapers throughout the country, have been exalting the national authority in the recent political discussions. The veto messages were sent to Congress ostensibly in defense of the national authority. Tho speeches of tho Republicans in the House and Senate were full of tributes to tbe national authority. Day after day the Republican press teems with articles lifting up the national authority, aud, by the same token, belittling the authority of the States. A large portion of the Republican party is anxious to make this the sole political issue in the elections of 1b79. It is charged that the Democratic party is determined to destroy the authority of tho nation when it asks for a destraction of the test oath for jurors, for the banishment of the army from the polls, and when it would forbid tho use of the Federal purse at the ballot-boxes. It is the theory of one party in this country that because it is determined forever in this country that a State has no right to secede from the Union a State has no rights at all. The war negatived forever the right of a State to leave the Union. Does it therefore follow that a State has no rights whatever? The right of secession was only asserted by a few States. Must all of the States lose all of their rights because it is settled in blood that these few States bad not this right? Because it is fixed that this Union of States is perpetual, is it fixed that there are no States —as the constitution knows States —in the Union?

Let us analyze this “national authority ” for which the Republicans so universally and vehemently plead. Do they really ask for the authority of the nation or for the authority of the Republican party ? The Federal Government is divided into three co-ordinate branches. These three are independent, distinct, separate, and together they compose the “ national authority.” The balancing is so delicate that supreme power rests nowhere; for the Executive may be impeached and removed from office, the Justices of the Supreme Court may also be impeached and removed, laws may be passed in spite of the refusal of the signature of the Executive; and, on the other hand, the laws of Congress may be declared null and void by the Supreme Court. It is, however, these three departments or bi. aches of Government that constitute the “ national authority.” Is it for these, for this “ national authority,” that the Republicans shout? Not at all. Upon the leading questions now at issue between the two parties, between two branches of the Government, the Supreme Court has already decided against the Republican party. That party does not plead for a national authority that includes the Supreme Court; and here is one of the three great branches of that autfiority that is ignored, ruled out, when these men hurrah for the nation with a big “N.” Do they shout for the legislative branch of the national authority? Not at all. They howl against it. This great coordinate branch of the national authority they specially curse and despise. It is clothed by tho constitution with larger powers than either of the other branches of the Government, but it has no place in the national authority for which our Republican friends now cheer. We find, in short, upon examination, that tho only part of the national authority of which the Republican orators and organs are really in favor is that part of which they happen to have control. It is not the national authority, but Republican authority, party and partisan authority, which they are anxious to maintain. It is not constitutional authority of the Federal Government, but the unconstitutional authority of a Republican Executive to which they are devoted. The executive department of the Government was designed by the constitution to be the most modest of' its three great branches. It was intended to bo in fact as in name the executive department. The Executive was to execute the laws, not to make or interpret them. We have roccntly heard the strange doctrine that the Executive is part of the legislative power of the country ; we have recently seen the Executive ignore or defy the department of the judiciary; and we now behold a great party shouting night and day for the national authority, meaning the one man in the White House in accord with itself. He, or his party, is become the national authority, and his party goes before the country on this issue. Driven from power in the national legislature, the Republican party would make the President the nation. “ I am the state,” said the imperial Louis XIV. When, therefore, the Republican journals and the Republican statesmen declaim in favor of the “ national authority,” they are only in favor of that part of it which they chance to control. They denounce and defy the legislative part of it, for it passed measures in harmony with civil liberty in time of peace, and they would have none of them. They ignore and defy the decrees of the Supreme Court, and the Executive alone is the national authority. Upon this proposition they appeal to the people, and denounce their opponents as traitors. Is the President the nation or not? Can men be opposed to the Republican authority and yet be in favor of the national au thority ?