The Illinois free trader and LaSalle County commercial advertiser. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1841-1843, 1842-06-03

governing power, yet the revolutionary
spirit exists, and requires but the ripen-
ing influence of concurrence of favora-
BILE circumstances, 10 bring ii TO the full
ness OF maturity. In such cases il is usu-
ally terrible in The effects of its operation
but where reason has long ruled the minds
OF men accustomed TO view the operation
OF free institutions, even though debarred
from the liberty of taking part in carry
ing them on, the case is very different
Take Rhode Island, for instance. A large
majority of the people of that State, tho
taxed to support the government, though
obliged to protect the property of the MI
norilv as well as their own, though o.
bliged to do fireman's duty where neces-
sary, and to take up arms for the defence
of the State and the Union, when COM
manded to do so, have never yet been re-
presented in the Legislature of their own
State, which has derived all its power and
authority from British royal charter
They have been taxed, but they have not
been represented with them the repub
lican maxim, held sacred in all the other
New England States, if not throughout
the whole country, has been constantly
violated from the days of the national rev.
clution to the present time; they have
been held amenabIe to the laws, without
being permitted to exercise the right-for
the right eXisted--of participating in
their enactment, and have been denied the
right OF voice in the appropriation Of
money contributed by themselves; and
they bore all this until the doors of re-
dress, at which they had repeatedly
Knocked, was contemptuously closed a.
gainst them. They might, it is true, have
continued to knock, but admonished by
past failures, and worn out by the fruitless
and hopeless operation, they resolved to
touch the knocker no more then, and
then only, did their hitherto political mas
tiers, the members of a chartered land
company, manifest disposition to grant
as boon, part only Of what they were
entitled to as 4 matter of right--a boon,
the acceptance of which would have been
an acknowledgment of the right to grant
1t, and which was therefore rejected on
principle, though it might have been ac-
cepled on the score of prudence as a COM
promise. But those men choose eternal
principle in preference to a temporary ex-
pediency, and whatever may be the i'm
mediate fate of their patriotic enterprise,
their peaceable attempt to secure their UNI
questioned rights through republican
forms and usages, rights to the exercise Of
which even some of their opponents now
per force admit they are entitled, yet their
cause must ultimate by triumph. Their
claim TO establish for the State a republic
can form of government is acknowledged
10 be valid by all American citizens, save
those who forget rightin their admiration
of power, and who either forget, or choose
not TO remember, that law, in this country,
is intended to guard rational republican
liberty, not to destroy it to protect the
citizen in the exercise of the rights guar
antecd to him by the national constitution,
not to support those who would wres
them from him, or who having taken,
would retain them. In fact, the suffrage
men of Rhode Island have with them the
sympathles of large majority of the real
people of the United States, and they have
earned then; they are entitled to them
both on account of their cause and their
conduct. Taxation without representa-
ton gave birth TO their revolution, and
throughout all their proceedings, they
have not permitted any conduct of their
opponents, nor any of their taunts, sneers,
contumeious or opprobrious language, nor
any OF their threats, TO irritale them into a
single breach of the peace, or any violation
of order. That they have violated law
having scarcely a parallel for atrocily,
now existing on the statute books of Eng
land, is true they did this in organizing
the government under the new consltu-
lion, and their minority opponents, back
ed and encouraged by the presence Of the
federal troops at Fort Adams, have taken
the first steps for the punishment Of some
of them; but whether they will dare to
set the moral and political feelings of the
country on fire by contamination o
their tyrannlcal purposes, remains to be
seen. There is force in public opinion
far stronger than the bolts and bars of any
dungeon in Rhode Island, and more pow
erlul than the bayonets of any hired sol
diery. Those, therefore, who have ca
prlclousIy and tyrannlcally commence,
sowing the wind, had better either sus
pend their operations, Or prepare to rea
the WhirlMind.