New-York daily tribune., 1843-06-23
The Memory of 1870.


smiles, and to fatter the dear People when
they do just what you would have them. The
noble People! have they not decided for our
party, and given one Of us a rich Collectorship
and another an Embassy, third fat Post Office,
and so on? Who dare hint doubt of their
virtue, probity, intelligence and independence
Have they not proved all clearly by the act which
put as into such nice places? But let them hap
pen to prefer other asprants for their favor, and
then what do we think of it? What ignorant
rascals they have become all at once! What
farce, iniquity and corruption are their Elections
What nonsense is what is called their verdict =
What folly or hypocrisy in supposing that they
had any definite purpose in the business
The nbaldry and dcnunciation INDUCED in re-
ference to the Election of l840 by those who boast
of their Democracy is at once amusing and in
structive For years they had been praising the
People, their invincible Virtue and clear-sighted
Patriotism, and taking their pay in oily salaries
and generous jobbing. There was nothing SO
wise so just, SO incorruptible, in their cyes--or
rather, in their mouths-as the People. But at
last they catch tremendous fogging, and now
what of the People? Why, they are debauched,
befooled unthinking mob, and their verdict but
now SO conclusive, has become jest-a swim
dle--the frothy rawlings of a hard-cider derlum.
This was not unnatural In the first moment OF
disappointed aspiration, but there is such thing
as carrying joke too far. After two years and
ahalf of varying fortunes, it is time that SO en-
phatic an expression of the Peoples will should
be treated with some show of decency Yet
what do we hear? On every hand, we have the
Van Buren, press and politicians abusing and de-
CRYING the verdict of 1910. They denounce it as
the result of fraud and corruption, of dcbauchery
and madness, of Log Cabin fooleries and Hard
Cider drunkenness. Some of the smaller fry OF
the Loco Foco press are accustomed to speak of
our own little paper, The Log Cabin as though
we might wish TO blot it from the public remem-
brance and even their master demagogne, the
nvcIuntary Hermit OF Underwood, with gross
violation of good taste as well as truth, has the
temerity to speak, in his ten column letter to In
diana, of :" the diaepatable scenes Of 1s40," and
"the effect which those scenes necessarily had in
{" shaking tho confidence of mankind in the fit
"ness of the American People for free institu-
tions"
The disreputable scenes Of 1910! 0!'-When
American citizens used to gather by hundreds to
sing and dance around Hickory Poles, with bar
rels of whisky rolled out and heads of beer-casks
stove in-when right here, in the heart of this en-
6chtcned emporium men were seen, after cask
of beer had been poured into the hole where the
Pole was to be set in front of Tammany Hall, to
lie down and drink it from the ground like hogs
the Kinderhooker saw nothing dSrcputahle
then. When American citizens have been swept
away from the Polls of our City with clubs by
bands Of misguided and excited immigrants,
half civilized and maddencd with liquor furnished
them by party iberality, we had no hint from
Mr.. Van Buren, that such scenes were disrepu.
table or calculated to impair the confidence OF
mankind in our fitness for free institutions =
When men who felt 1t their duty to bear testi-
mony against Slavery were mobbed and blud.
geoned for peacefully so doing, and the owner OF
a free press was shot down in his own ,enemen,
for guarding his press from destruction by a band
of ruffans who chose TO suspect that 1t ,oould be
used against Slavery, this demagogue could see
in il nothing calculated to shake confidence In
our fitness for free institutions, but coolly re-
marked in his Inaugural that " q reckless disre-
exposed individuals to popular indignation" bn,
when the People uprise IN their strength, and dc.
fying the mighty influence OF office and power,
of successive triumphs and allurng party names,
without violence or injury TO any man, declare
by majority Of l45,000 on far the heaviest vote
ever polled that he shall be no longer President,
then our kinderhook Statesman pyonounces ths
whole business discreditabc,' and calculated to
shake faith in our capacity for seif-government
Sir, if this were true you arc not the man to pro-
claim it. There is a dry old distich which runs
No rogue e'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion OF the law,
which should have counseled you to modesty In
this connection.
But the assertion of Mr.. Van Buren is as false
as indecorous. There never was Political Con
test in which the great mass of the People were
better informed as to what was held and proposed
by each party than in that of 1910. Every where
pamphlets and papers. of each were distributed
with profusion never before known, and gener-
ally read Every where the best orators of either
party Were in the field and the People gathered
day after day to hear them-6rst on one side and
then on the other. If they did not understand
on what the two parties differed, then we may
despair of their ever doing so, Probably few men
now living Will ever see another contest or vote
more universal than that of 1910. AS to corrup.
ton, the thing was downright impossible We
did not know one voter. among the thousands of
differing Politics, we did know whose vote could
have been bought at any price, or to whom it