Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1859 — Painful but Proper. [ARTICLE]

Painful but Proper.

The Democracy declare that it will be a shame to elect any man Speaker of the House who has endorsed Helper’s book, and not a few of them insist that the shame would be too much for their sensitive natures, and they could only sustain it by withdrawing bjdlly. Mr. Cobb begged the Republicans to say if they liad’nt somebody to run for Speaker who had not endorsed that book. In effect lie said: “Gentlemen, anybody else. We are not particular. You want to get to work. Give us any body else, and we will consent to let you. But if you insist in running this man, who has endorsed a book proving that slavery is very injurious to the country, and urging the non-slave-holders to got up conventions and parties to vote it down right where it lives, we must insist on letting work go to the bad forever more.” Now the Republicans propose to make a test on their side, and see what the Democracy will say to it. Tney say, “No man who has avowed disunion sentiments, in Congress or anywhere else, is fit to preside over the Legislature of the Union.” What will the Democracy say to it! Ilow will they relish the test turned the wrong way ! “Oh, gentlemen,” said a humbug doctor, whom a crowd of indignant dupes were soaking with his own drugs,‘“don't, for God’s sake, pour that down me! You don’t knew how nasty it is. If you only knew what it is as well as 1 do, you would not make a dog take it.” The Democracy will talk very much the same way when the Republicans come to pour their disunion sentiments down their throats. There is a degree of impudence in ibis resistance to the Republicans who have, without knowing more than its general purpose, and not intending any approval of the author’s own particular views, endorsed He] per's book, that passes the bounds of insult, and approaches those of mere fun. They say thut Helper's book widens the breacii between the North and the South, and its teachings, if adopted, would result in disunion. Therefore they denounce it, and all who have ignorantly recommended it. And the very same men who denounce its disunion teachings and tendencies, actually declare themselves disunionists, and, amid perfect thunders of Democratic applause, proclaim that the Union ought to be dissolved the moment any other than the Democratic party controls it. They denounce a disunion tendency, and in toe very same breath avow disunion itself. 11 this is not the liighth of impudence,then it is the depth of foil)', and either case it is out of the reach of indignation. We cun only laugh at it, and wonder, as the fellow did at the circus when he saw the clown swallow himself, “what the thunder will they do next.”— -liul. Stale Jour.