Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1871 — PENNSYLVANIA. [ARTICLE]

PE NN SYL V ANIA.

Address of the Republican State Central Committee. The Pennsylvania Republican State Central Committee, in a recent address to the people of the State, after referring to the past achievements of the Republican party, proceeds as follows : Among the necessities growing out of the rebellion, the national government found itself compelled to submit to the States, for their ratification, three amendments to the Constitution—one (known as the Thirteenth) abolishing slavery; another (the Fourteenth) securing the rights of citizens to the enfranchised slaves, and prohibiting the repudiation of any part of the national debt, or the payment of any part of the rebel debt; and another (the Fifteenth) prohibiting the States from excluding anyone from the right of suffrage on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. These amendments, having all been duly ratified in the method pointed obt by the Constitution, are now a component part of that instrument. Their adoption stands as the grandest peaceful achievement of ancient or modem times. No party ever before undertook so great a task; and its accomplishment, in so shorts space of time, is a work in which the Republican party may well feel proud. To secure the complete protection of these emancipated and enfranchised people is now one of the unquestioned duties of the nation; and no party is so fit to be intrusted with that duty as the party which has done the preliminary work. The party which has hitherto continuously resisted the policy thus established, is not the one, now, to cany it out During the war for suppressing the rebellion, and in carrying out the great measures which have necessarily flowed from it, the Democratic party has continuously been in the opposition. It opposed the adoption of stringent measures to put down the rebellion ; the levying of troops to suppress U| the borrowing of money to pay the cost of the war; the emancipation proclamation of President Lincoln; the adoption of all the amendments to the Constitution ; the reconstruction measures,by which the revolted States were brought tack into the Union; and,generally,every measure neoeaaary to the auoceasful prosecution of the war, or to the successful res-

to ration of peace. At present, too, it ie opposed to the means necessary for raising revenue to pay the interest on the pub lie debt and secure its steady redaction; is in favor of a semi repudiation of that debt by paying it in a depreciated currency, if paid at all; is watching for an opportunity to annul the new amendments to the Conslilion, and is generally committed to any line of policy which will remit the country to its condition prior to 1860. It may be urged here that the Democratic party of this State, in the ninth resolution of the platform adopted by Its late Slate Convention, has acquiesced in the adoption of the amendments of the Constitution we have referred to, and cannot now bo charged with hostility to them. We answer that the acquiescence expressed in that resolution has~not itself been acquiesced in by the rank and file of the party. Over onethird of the convention voted strenuously against it, and tho action of the convention has since been repudiated by many leading men and journ&Js of the party. Besides, whatever acquiescence has been given, has been given sullenly and not heartily—as a matter of policy, springing from party necessity, and not from a conviction of its propriety. Wherever a vote has been honestly given, or voice sincerely raised for this “ new departure, ’’ it may very properly be regarded as an extorted confession that the Republican party has all aloug been right in what the Democratic parly has steadily opposed; and this confessed, what need is there, or can there be, for the further existence of tho Democratic party ? When Gen. Grant came into office, in 1869, he announced his determination to secure the honest and faithful collection of the revenue, the steady reduction of the public debt, and such abatement in taxation as was consistent wtyh this policy. In the space of little over two years this determination, faithfully adhered to, has resulted in paying off $230,000,000 of the public debt, and in the abolition of nearly all the taxes imposed under the previous laws. In addition to this, he has, by his wise and firm foreign policy, succeeded in settling all our outstanding difficulties with Great Britain, in a manner alike honorable and advantageous to us as a people. The treaty lately ratified by both nations,which removes all causes of quarrel, and establishes peace and amity between them, has commanded the admiration of the civilized world, and placed the United States in the foremost rank of the nations of the earth. The result is one of which every American may justly feel proud. To continue the Republican party in power is to continue the policy begun both in State and Nation, of maintaining the public credit, paymg off our debt, reducing taxation, settling international difficulties without bloodshed, and sustaining the great principles involved in the measures necessarily growing out of war. To restore the Democratic party to power is to destroy the public debt, pave the way for repudiation, bring in the bid tide of corruption, mismanagement and extravagance, and open up anew all the questions involved in the reconstruction of the Southern States, now settled upon an honorable basis. For present proof of this we refer to the consequences flowing from the accidental majority of the Democrats in the State Senate last winter. To that fact we owe a session prolonged to the middle of May, at an extra cost of $100,000; the re establishment of the forsaken policy ot employing extra (and useless) officers in the legislative bodies and granting them extra pay; an appropriation bill increased bevond all former bounds to the extent of half a million; the defeat of all measures h for calling a constitutional convention at an early day to put an end to that curse of our State—special legislation; and, as if determined to show that this curse should not be removed by their aid, the enactment of the enormous number of 1,800 local bills. And this is but a tithe of what we should have had to endure had they had both houses and the Governor on their side.

A still further proof of the unfitness of that party to be intrusted with power is to be found in the melancholy history of the late riots in New York. In that city the Democrats have undisputed sway, and through it, in the State. They had the power in their hands to prevent this riot and bloodshed, but they would not use it either at the right time or ip the right way. Why t Because the party is possessed of no principle which can lead it to respect the rights of man, be they civil or religious. Its sole idea of rights is derived from the maxim that ought makes right. This was clearly evinced on the Fifteenth Amendment, in which the Democratic leader in the State.scouted the claim that there were any such things as human rights. The idea, he said, was a myth and a humbug. And this sentiment of the Democratic leader in Pennsylvania has been carried out to the letter m New York. A few thousand men, in the exercise of their constitutional right to assemble together, inform the authorities of their purpose to parade the streets on a certain day. Another body of men, who

always vote the Democratic ticket, and numbering many more thousands, notify the authorities that this parade must not be permitted, and that if it is they will attack it and disperse it, no matter at what cost of life or limb to the party attacked. The Democratic rulers of New York at once decline to defend the few-against the many in the exercise of their constitutional right; deny that there is any such right; yield to the defiance of the mob because it has might on its side, and, at the demand of that mob, forbid the peaceable and law-abiding citizens to assemble together, as the constitution permits, or to exercise the rights which the law allows. It is true that at the last hour, when the public indignation had been aroused at this base abandonment of the civil rights of the people, the State authorities stepped in and permitted what the city authorities had previously forbidden; but the mob bad already triumphed too far to yield peacefully to this sudden change, and the slaughter which followed is attributable solely to the official cowardice which first yielded to a mob it was afterward unable to control. It is plain, moreover, that the first act of prohibiting the parade was the legi imate outgrowth of the principles controlling the Democratic party, that men have no inherent rights, and that might alone gives right It brought into view the ferocious claws which, though afterward withdrawn, the furred foot could not wholly conceal. It was a clear indication of what we may expect throughout the country should the Democratic party ever return to power. If our civil and religious rights are to be preserved in this country against the attacks of turbulent mobs, and the demands of a wild fanaticism, they can be preserved only by the party based immovably on a deep regard for human rights and constitutional guarantees; and in the light of these facts we appeal to the people of Pennsylvania to rally to the support of their imperiled constitutional franchises, and by the defeat of the Democratic party, which has proven itself alike unwilling and unable to uphold them, teach itthat the people will bear no yielding to mob violence nor tampering with their constitutional rights, and will never permit the surrender of the citadel they have erected at a bloody cost, sacred now and forever, to civil and religious liberty.^ A. novel suggestion, proceeding from some humanitarian, is to stretch galvanized iron wires across Niagara Falls, suspended about a foot above the water, for the convenience of persons on their way over the cataract The author thinks that reluctant tourists on that route would be able to grasp the wires and tow themselves ashore.