Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 October 1879 — THE DIFFERENCE. [ARTICLE]

THE DIFFERENCE.

[From the Louisville Courier-Journal.] The Cleveland Leader says: “ The difference between the Democratic and Republican parties in their respective appeals to the constitution is that the former knows only the constitution as it was; while the latter appeals to the constitution as it is. The three amendments adopted after the war and embodying the results of the war arc just as much parts of the constitution as those ratified in 1789. It is true that the more outspoken of the Democratic party in the South repudiate those amendments and threat! n to tear them and all legislation made under them from the statute books, and that the less frank members of the party North and South preserve a discreet silence as to them, but the Republicans and the great mass of citizens at the North, if not elsewhere, hold the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments as much entitled to obedience and respect as the Tenth.” The real difference betwacn the Democratic and Republican parties is that the Democrats fully and patriotically accept the constitution as it is, and the Ph epublicans do not regard the constitution either as it was or is. Mr. Hayes, the head of the Republican party, is at th]s moment traveling about with great Pomp through the country under the care of the General of the Army, who declares constantly in his speeches that the President is an “absolute” ruler. This of itself is sufficient proof that the Republican party does not accept the constitution as it is, for that instrument confers no shadow of absolute authority on the President. “ Absolute ” is an ugly word to be so proclaimed in a republic by a servant of the people. It marks, however, very distinctly the chasm between the constitutional Democratic party and the centralizing anticonstitutional Republican party. The three amendments, which are fully accepted by the Democratic party, do not by any means destroy the constitution as it teas. The tenth section remains in full force, and the relation between the State and Federal Governments is unaltered save in the one particular indicated by Chief Justice Waite, of the United States Supreme Court, who, in the case of the United States vs. Cruikshank, said : “In Minor vs. Haffersett, 21 Wallace, 178, we'decided that the constitution of the United States has not conferred the right of suffrage upon any one, and that the United States have no voters of their own creation in the States. In United States vs. Reese et a1.,-we hold that the Fifteenth amendment has invested the citizens of the United States with a new constitutional right, which is exemption from discrimination on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. From this it appears that the right of suffrage is not a necessary attribute of national citizenship, but that exemption from discrimination in the exercise of that right on account of race, etc., is. 'The right to vote in, the States comes from the Stales, but the right of exemption from the prohibited discrimination comes from the United States. The first has not been granted or secured by the constitution of the United States, but the last has been.” This “new constitutional right” the Democratic party fully indorses. Nobody in that party wants “ to tear them and all legislation made under them from the statute books,” but if the Democratic party gets into power some of the laws which have been pronounced unconstitutional by the highest tribunal and which are based not on the three amendments, but on the suppuration of a diseased partisanship, will undoubtedly be taken off the statute books. The amendments will stand and be enforced. The Republican State of Rhode Island has been for a long time the most persistent advocate of the right of a State to legislate voters from the polls. Among the legal voters thus excluded are many Union soldiers who fought faithfully through the war. It is needless to say that no Republican organ is addicted to trotting out Rhode Island as a State devoted to the “ na-tional-supremacy ” doctrine, especially as one of her Republican Senators has declared that the State was free and sovereign, and could not be interfered with by the Federal Government in the matter of suffrage.

We need scarcely remark that the Democrats hold the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments as much entitled to respect-and obedience as the Tenth. The Tenth will stand a bulwark against the unconstitutional centralism which has, by the Republican party, been falsely based on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. The tenth section embodies the Democratic and constitutional doctrine of State rights, without which we would no longer have a republic. The Republicans in 1860 made extreme State rights a plank in their platform. To-day they would give a good deal to have the tenth section of the constitution wiped out.