Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1879 — The New York Platform. [ARTICLE]

The New York Platform.

The New York Republican State Convention, which met at Saratoga on the 3d, adopted the following platform of principles: The Republicans of New York, pledging themselves anew to National supremacy, <s|iiul rights, five elections and honest money, declare these principles: 1. The Republic of the United States is a Nation and not a league. The Nation is supreme within its own Constitutional sphere. It is girded with power to guard its own life, to protect its own citizens, to regulate its own elections and to execute its own laws. The opposite doctrine of State Sovereignty is the baleful mother of nullification, secession and anarchy. Republicanism stands for National supremacy in National affairs and State-rights -jnStaie concerns. Democracy stands for State Sovereignty with its own twin heresy, that the Union is a mere confederacy of States. 2. To refuse the necessary supplies for the Government, with the design of compelling the unwilling consent of a co-ordinate and independent branch to odious measures is revolution. To refuse appropriations for the execution of existing and binding laws is nullification. We arraign the Democratic Representatives in Congress as guilty both of revolutionary attempts and nullifying schemes, and we reprobate their action as calculated to subvert the Constitution and to strike at the existence of the Government itself. 3. The safety of the Republic demands free and pure.elections. The Democratic Congress has attempted dictation by caucus, by threats of starving the Government, and by months of disturbing agitation to break down the National election laws. W e denounce this effort M n conspiracy to overthrow the ttab guards of free suffrage, and to open the ballot-box to the unchecked domination of the ride-clubs of the South and the repeaters of New York. We declare our uncompromising opposition to anv repeal of these just protective laws; and Republican Senators and Representatives in Congress, for their resistance to this attempt, and President Hayes for his veto messages, deserve and receive our hearty approval. 4. The Republican party neither justifies nor tolerates military interference with elections. It seeks only to protect the ballot-box from the interference of force and fraud. It repels the false charges and denounces the false pretenses of conspirators who, while professing free elections everywhere, sustain mob law in the Bouth; while inveighing against troops at the polls to protect citizens, refuse to prohibit armed clubs from surrounding the ballot-box to intimidate them, and, while affecting that the soldier’s bayonet will overawe free electors, remain silent while the assassin’s bullet seals the fate of political independence. 5. We call upon the people to remember that the Democratic party forced the extra session of Congress, without warrant or excuse; that it prosecuted its partisan purposes by revolutionary methods; that it persistently obstructed resumption, and still constantly presses disturbing measures; that it reopens sectional questions closed by the National triumph, and threatens to repeal war legislation; that its Southern element answers conciliation only with violence; that it’s hope of success rests ujone on a Solid South, and that its triumph would make the Solid South the ruling force of the Nation. We recognize that the great body of the people who defended the Union, of Whatever party name, are equally patriotic and equally interested in good government, and we earnestly invoke them to resist the dangerous designs of the party organization under the sway of those who were lately in rebellion and who seek to regain in the halls of legislation what they lost on the field of battle. #. The successful resumption of specie payments, despite Democratic prediction and hostility, is the crowning element of the Republican financial policy. Followed by returning National prosperity, improved credit, refunded debt and reduced Interest, it adds another to the triumphs which prove that the Republican party is equal to the highest demands. Our whole currency should bo kept at par with the monetary standard of the commercial world, and any attempt to debase the standard, to depreciate paper or to deteriorate coin should be firmly resisted. 7. The claims of the jiving and the memories of the dead defenders of the Nation conjure us to pretest against the partisan and unpatriotic greed which expels old Union soldiers from their well-deserved rewards and advances Confederate soldiers to their places. 8. As the pledge and proof of its economy In State Administration, the Republican party, in spite of prolonged Democratic resistance, proposed and passed Constitutional amendments which rest act the expenses of canals to their receipts, and reform the whole system of eaqal and prison managemeht, and by ex tingulshing the puldU indebtedness and relieving the people from any further tax, therefore, it effected a great savingin State taxation. These fruits of Republican measures the Democrats have brazeqlv attempted to apprrmiiute as their own. Appealing to the records in support of our declaration, we pronounce their claims unfounded and hold up their authors as public imposters. 9. The Inequalities of taxation which press most upon those least able to boar them should be remedied. To this dnd the Kcpuldicnn Legislature created a commission to revise the assessment and tax- laws, and to reach a class of property which now largely escapes; and wo remind the people that this salutary reform was unwarrantably defeated by the present Democratic Executive. 10. Moneyed and transportation corporations are not alone works of private enterprise, but arc created for public use, and with due regard to vested rights, it is the clear province and the plain duty of the State to so supervise and regulate 'such corporations as to secure the just and impartial treatment ofall interested, to foster the industrial and agricultural welfare of the people, and, with a liberal policy, favor public water-ways to maintain the commercial supremacy of the State. tVoTook to the ihqtflJynW in pregrbsß under direction of the Legislature to develop facts which will guide to all needed action.