Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1847-05-20
Political AntagOnismS.

Political Antagonists,
1t is a necessary feature of a republican form of
government government in which every man is a
sovereignty in himself, to certain extent-that the
populace should be divided into factions and parties,
and that a polemic warfare be perpetually maintained
among them. 1t becomes necessary from the fact it.
self that each voter is such a sovereignty-that he can
produce a certain amount of positive effect in the adj
ministration of government. Owing to a want of Just
notions in respect to the necessity and utility of this
condition of things, arises a prevalent radical error
in political economy, which is harder to correct than
almost any other. Many become vexed at the repeat
ed and p~rotracted strife in the political world, wearied
of the mental and physical labor which it imposes, and
disguised with the dishonesty and d~uplicity of partizan
contention, until they insensibly come to regard the
whole as a species of mountebankism, and the cleo
tive franchise as of little consequence,-reallv not un-
derstanding why all this litigation may not be ended
forever, and the complex machinery of government
move on in quiet harmony, with no tendency to get
out of repair. They do not see why party need op-
pose party, or why the people need TO watch their stat
ute-maklng agents and executives and hold them to a
rigid account. They do not see that all this commo-
ton has any good effect in settling the tariff question,
the metallic or paper currency question, the emancipa-
ton of the slave, or any other dispute. These are
certainly evils-evils which unavoidably attend the
unlimited freedom of thought and action which a dem
ocratIc government confers and democratic institutions
cherish; but they are only such evils as necessarily at
tend popular efforts; it is but the labor necessary to the
reward. Now plainly, if without the elective franchise
we are at once reduced to a despotism, in which the
mass have no rights to obtain, instead of being a de-
mocracy, where no essential wrongs need be endured;
and if the elective franchise is unavoidably connected
with some evils, it is impolitic to withdraw from the
exercise of our prerogotive in consequence of those
evils; for, to abandon the lesser evils, is also to ADAM
don the greater good, and if we would enjoy the one
we must endure the other.
The history of the world shows the fact that the
inevitable tendency of porcr is to corruption, and no
method was ever devised, in any age of the world, to
administer a sautary corrective to this tendency in
national governments until the novel experiment was
tried of constituting a people its Opn governor-em-
powering it to institute, alter, amend, nullify, %construe
and execute its own laws by its own periodically chos-
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necessity would bring into collision men of every form
and phase of political views and leave the incongru-
Gus compound to separate into factions as best suited
their respective principles. Then occurs the searching
discussion, which evolves all of truth or error pertaining
to either; and the argus-eyed watching, so %efFectual to
restrain.
Under a despotic government the tendency to cor
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democratic, the remedy is ever at hand-it grows
spontaneously beside the evil. By the omnipotency of
the ballot-box, instead of the prowess of the bayonet
and butcher knife, in one short ttOo days the entire as
pect of things is changed, and the majority of the gov
erned dictate the policy & measures to be substituted.
By what other means can so stupenduous ends be
obtained? By what other means can national socia /,
political or moral evils be removed, or public veal and
private rights secured while, in the fitness of things it
becomes necessary to continue on earth such a thing
as a human government? What national evil can long
withstand the persevering, united attacks of the elect
i've franchise, employed even by a small minority, when
that minority is planted on the rock of Truth, stimulat-
ed and sustained by every tributary oftruth and justice?
Can Slavery withstand i2
HC WOLlu u uC6H Su(lle lOul IHUuSduu years eA-
perimenting with this difficulty, and laboring to heal
this universal infrmity Of government; but it is less
than a hundred since the true secret-the PLAIN, SIM
pie, safe secret has been discovered,-the form under
which we live, constituting every man a component
part of the government itself, has resolved the problem
and showed Despotism how a people may be freed
from it's thraldom.
Is it a light thing, then, to trfe with privileges thus
important, and allow a virtual d~espotism to obtain by
conquest that which a Democracy may have for the
6sking?
We have thus written, not to fashionably eulogise
our government and institutions, for that is done to
our hurt already; but rather to endeavor to elevate our
dropping perception of the privileges which make the
government, and bring to re nembrance the almost for
gotten fact that no political or national evil can er8t in
This government longer than the people voluntarily tciH Il
TO eriSt. 80