Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1883 — DEMOCRACY. [ARTICLE]

DEMOCRACY.

As Expounded at the Ire quo is Club Banquet, iu Chicago. Speeches of William F. Vilas and Garter H. Harrison. Col. Vilas. There most be a change, and a great change—achangeof sentiment and a change of methods. The controversies and passions begotten of the war are things of the past, useful only in their teaching of errors to avoid New ideas, new purposes, new issues and new political associations are before ns. Mr. President and gentlemen, the change has already began. To your credit and honor, the keynote of that change, most fruitful to our hope, was sounded at yo.ir banquet last year, and resounded with cheerful melody in the elections of lavt fall. To overthrow the gigantic forms of error and wrong which have Intrenched and fortified, almost unobserved, for these twenty years, will require the concentrated energy of all the be-t of every political complexion. There must be political association to unite them, without animosities to prosecute or revenges to gratify; its face set forward to do the mighty work incumbent on the people of to-day. All philosophy and reason te cb that its germ must lie with the patty in onposition, for the evil is roo ed in the party in administration. But its blossom and fruitage will spring from the hearts and minds of the whole people. Y ur conference last year invited recurrence to the teaching of the fathers for light and inspiration on the path ahead. It is the dictate of wisdom. It willTcvive a party of the people, instant and zealous to demand and secure thel rights and privilegea The count y needs renewal of the faith and doctrine ’ f the oldDrmocr cy of Jefferson Now, as then, it is adequate, and noth ingles*is adequate, te maintain c nscitutionai liberty. Now, cs then, it will prove the road to happine-s and piosperity. We want it, 10 defend against the nation’s most intiuiou* peril, centralization of power unnecessary to the c unmon welfare of the Union. We want it, to reform our civil se - vice and restore honesty, canhbt ity and fl e ity to supremacy as quaiincati ns fpr office.” We want it, to give again purity, ih. tegrity, umpli ity and economy to the administration of Government. We want it, to suppress the tyr nny of “bossism” and open the ways of political ervice to self-respect-ing manhood; to put a period to the canting Pecksnifflanism in office, which so long has openly prated virtue and secretly practiced iniquity, and give us again the plain and sturdy servants of t -e olden days, who are what they seem. We want it, to stop the plunder of officeholders by assessments, and to put down that secret treason of distrust which resorts to corruption os better than argument to win the judgment of the people. We want it, for its equality and philanthropy, for its broad faith and intrepid confidence in humanity, for its love of justice to all, for its abhorrence of class favoritism in legislation, taxation and administration. There rest the principles which must animate and sustain the people’s cause in the tremendous contiictimmedfately pending. I need hardly name it No man can longer shut his eyes to the open fact There must and will ‘be aggressive and relentless war against the dominion of monopoly and the oppression of iniquitous taxation and unjust lawa Many forms of this tyranny beset us. But one overshadows all the rest, demands the earliest redress and challenges the greatest effort. Its long, felonious tentacles have bound their prehensile grip upon every mode of primary production, every source of wealth. They are fastened upon all parties, all classes and conditiona It is a 6onspiiacy against the people, so comprehensive that every community holds its agents, so potential that Congress has obeyed it for more than twenty yeara There stands the enemy, there lies the battle-field, and there the battle is at hand! I give you joy in the prospect of it! The foe is sturdy and defiant From their ramparts of riches, piled in menacing mass, the lords of the tariff proclaim their purpose and power to maintain ihat sum of financial villainy, protective taxation. With skillful ingenuity they have lightened other burdens to make this more secure, and they fill the air with sophistries. The simple question is; Is it right, or is it wrong? For, if wrong, it robs the industrious, wealthproducing workers of this country of more than $50.C0D,000 of iheir earnings every year, to fill the chests of a favored class. If wrong, it is a stupendous wrong. All the doctrines and Iraditiohs o Democracy, springing from the soil of liberty, cry out against it. It is heresy, false andperntciouß, that our millions must labor in forest and field, in counting-room and office, to maintain any class of manufacturers, under pretense of pampering any form of industry. The spoil enriches only the few masters, enervates labor, and (trikes enterprise with paralysis. With every material native to our soil, our manufacturers, with profitable adventure, ought to fill our own shipp, manned by our own hardy seamen, with products for every buying country on the globe. Bub what do we see? Our exports are mostly from the farm and mine, carried in the ships of free-trade England. Our manufacturing industries, fitted and limited only to our fictitious market, with prices upheld by force of legislation, are in a state or intermittent fever, now stimulated to overproduction, then gasping with stagnation, while the excellent avocations of shipbuilding and navigation, which ought to furnish manly industry to hundreds of thousands, languish in decay. The tariff iB a form of slavery, not less hateful because the whip is not exposed. No free people can or wid bear it There is but one course. The plan of protective robbery must be utterly eradicated from every law for taxation. 'With unflinching steadfastness, but moderately, without destructive haste or violence, the firm demand of freedom must be persistently pressed, until every dollar 1 evied in the name of Government goes to th e treasury, and the vast millions now extorted for a class are left in the pockets of the people who earn thp money. Resolute to defend the sacred rights of property, we must be resolute to redress the flagrant wrongs of property. God forbid that the rights and liberties of this people be laid at the feet of Mammon! It matters not that this controversy shall divide present houses or break the bonds of past association. Such distresses must nob be set in contrast with the welfare of a great nation; they must not stay the demand for justice of a mighty people. Nay. they cannot. Nor any curbs be long applied. They only bind up wrath to burst in greater violence in a day of wrath! There is fearful menace to peace and happiness in the spectacle of injustice with its foot upon the necks of men. Who can fix his contemplation on the glistening splendors of our future without a pang lest our responsibilities undischarged shall sprinkle the robes of liberty with Blood or hamper her limbs with chains? Plant the old ’standard of constitutional Democracy and beat the long roll 1 Summon the hosts of liberty and set your ranks in order! If any fear the battle, send him to the rear! If any will not serve God, but prefer Mammon, give him safe conduct to the enemy! Invoke in the house of counsel the faith and philanthropy of Jefferson; bring again to the Held the daring alacrity of Jackson! And in the sunlight of onr nation’s destiny, go “where Democratic principle leads the way" to fight the people s enemies and win the people’s victories! Mayor Harrison. Political philosophers, in searching for the origin of government, trace it back to pater famil'as, to that authority which the father acquires in rude society over his children and their descendants. Taking human nature as our guide we have a right to believe that such a theory is true, but, after ad, it is the imaginings of men that give such origin, and does not come from a historical or traditional narration. Our earliest knowledge, as portrayed on the pages of historfy, s ows us well-defined nationalities, a strong Government, whose rulers c aimed to govern by reason of the possession of divine attrib ute 3 . Victoria signs herself Queen of England and Empress by the grace of God Here in America, however, the rulers of the land govern by the will cf the people If we were to follow down to the earliest ages known to history, through the long successive ages down to the present; in sf 1 other countries than America, we will find that either legally or by prejudice or tradition men have held office not in trust for the gov erned, but as the custodians of Che pcs tiona which were attached to the pxe ogatives of the crown. Here in ft ee Am- rica, however, no such tradLiocs exist, and »U men concede that the offices are of .the the officer is » servant of the people, bound

to obey them as his sovereign, with no rights inherent to his office higher than the right he holds as a citizen, and that the office itself and its powers are for the people and their good. This is certainly true theoretically, and yet to-day parties battle against parties,orators thunder in the ears of others, not for the high principles of government, but for the privilege of dividing the spoils of office and of making the spoils as rich as possible, and the labor of office as right as is consistent with its holding. But a little while ago a man crazed with the greed of office stamck down a President, made a madman by the howlings of the newspapers over the division of spoils won by party success Newspapers talk of the principles of the Government, but the dispatches from the seat of Government daily, filling the r newß columns, are full of lists of appointments, amd of the dissensions of Senators and Representatives among each other over an appointee to a postoffice, a cust un-house gauger, or some other paltry position United States Senators meet in the State capital, gather around them the magnates and Legislators of a State, discuss and arrange, into the small hours of the night, not the principles of government or the policy of the party to which they are but the equitable distribution of the spoils among their adherents, with an eye to the perpetuation of a Senatorial toga on the one or the building up of the hones of the other for a Presidential candidate I said a while ego that, theoretically, in America officers are the servants of the people, while in England men yet held to the traditions of the past that offices are the prerogatives of the crown, yet ip Ensrland the office holder is the servant of the people, while in America he is yet the people’s despoiler. The Democratic party, the birth of whose founder in America we are this night celebrating, has ever held that man is capable of seJf-goveminent, and that the office-holder is a servant of the people; that a publio office is a public trust Thomas Jefferson, when asked for the appointment? of an officeholder,- inquired if he was capable, if he was honest, if he was true to the constitution. To-day a President of the United States, or his advisors, makes no suoh inquiry, but de- - mauds what he did for his party at its last election, or what he will ao for it at the next. The mission of the Democratic party is to restore the Jeffersonian principle, and to have men in office who not only acknowledge themselves to be but are In fact the people’s servants It is a singular thing that, while the United States Government may have 70 OOP to 100,000 office-holders, that while these 70,000 to 100,000 are bat a handful compared with the 25,000,000 or thereabout of people who support the successful party, yet these 70,000 or 100,000 so blind the people that they get wild with excitement over the chances of patronage, and a delegate in a national convention assembled can boldly stand up and ask “If it is not for ■ the offices, then in the name of God what is tk'e'convention assembled for?” and this inquiry, which ought to have driven suoh a delegate with com empt from the convention's door, makes 25,0(a), 000 people applaud him for his outspoken honesty. An easy thing it is to be honest in expression, when ho expression is so black as to bring shame to the face. It has been thrown in the face of the Democratic party that within that party was originated the damnable doctrine that -JO the victors belong the spoils.” Much an expre;-slon may have been uttered by a man Claiming to be a Democrat, but so apt a scholar has been the Rei üblican pax ,v that to-day, in no single Republican State in this Un'on, is there any disagreement over party principles, over the principles of government; but the fight over patri nage is so intense arid hitler that one faction prefers to see the p rty defeat d rather than other faction should hold the pat-onage. If the Democratic party be true to itself and will show whenever a Democratic official gets into a position that such official considers his office as a trust for the people, then the Democratic party may lay down no planks on the tariff, no planks on many other issues, that are now talked of as party measures, but can prom he to the people that th s is a Government of the people and for the peoEle, and not a Government for the officeolder; and with such a promise con win the support of the people. Thomas Jefferson believed that man was capable of selfgovernments He was one of the people, sympathized with the people, and as such rode his horse to Washington on inaugural day; whereas now R publican Presidents, when inaugurated, have to have all the paraphamalia of royalty, with national and volunteer soldiery marching to do them honors, making this Government a Government not of the people with the simple tastes that the people are accustomed to, but a” Government flattering to the rich man and pandering to the vitiated taste of plutocracy. Our present President, ivho holds his office at the price of the most dastardly crime of modern times, when he goes upon an American ship is not satisfied with the bunting which floated over a Decatur or n» Farragut, but must have the stars and' stripes floating over him emblazoned With embroidery and silks. The Democracy wishes to get rid of these things. Democracy believes that the idjli-e-. holder, in all matters of trust, neverthinks of his own interest, but the interests of those who placed their trust in him. JUs, at least, is and should be the true principle, of the Democratic party. The Democratic, party believes that that government i$ the heet’which governs least; that those ;laws* are the most beneficial which incumber the 1 fewest number of pages of the statute books. Democracy believes that the .individual man should” have the largest liberty wnich is compatible with the safety of the others and of the whole. It believes that men should be left as untrameled bylaws as is possible for the safety of the nation. It believes that the funct ons of the Government are exhausted when it protects and fosters the material interests of the-Gov-ernment. It oelieves that the moral and religious duties of the individual should, be left to himself. It believes that when a man enters the threshold of his home he is then in his cAstle and that no minion of the law has the right to invade that castle except when armed with a proper warrant It believes that wherever a man goes the freedom of the home goes with hipi so'iong as he does not violate public decency or infringe up n the rights of others. It believes that personal liberty is as neces ary to the happiness of man as civil liberty is essential to well-organized society. It believes that the laws should not interfe ein matto s of religion, and that the thunder of the pulpit may pour down upon the commission of sin, but that no law guided by narrow-mindedness or fanaticism rhould interfere with the personal liberty of others, who are unwilling to be cut down to fit a t rocustlmbed. Democracy believes in the 1 nguage of Thomas Jefferson, that all men are created free and equal, and that the poorest man in the land, who wields a Sick or drives a plane, is as proud and erect i his lowly citizenship as is the owner of countless millions rolling in a padded chariot or in a railroad palace. Onr enemies say that our party is a party of Bourbon*, and that it learns nothing and forgets nothing; it is the cheap literature of the partisan press but we are willing to acknowledge that in one respect we are Bourbons, though out of power for upward of two decades; like Bourbons feeling the blood of old Democracy flowing in onr veins, though cast out from onr patrimony, yet we ever look steadily aloft, believing in the honesty of the people and trusting to the people, we have never folded our garments about us and laid down in death, Dut have had an abiding confidence in the future, and know that while there is a Lord in Israel and a warm heart in mankind our party must and will succeed. They have talked about tbird parties and told us that we could never win while we held the name of Democracy, yet with unfaltering trust we have held on the chart that Jefferson gave us, and will keep our flag constantly unfurled to the breeze, and will battle until we shall have planted it on the national battlements, ana we will then guarantee to the people a Government of honesty, economy and liberty.