The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848, 1848-08-16


country. These efforts are but too success
full and those who have duly considered how
essential to national pelmanence and pros
perity is deep. rooted nationality of feeling
cannot view this unnationalizing process with
feelings of common alarm.
Meanwhile, the interests of sections and
States have necessarily absorbed so large a
share of the popular patriotism, that very
little room is left for universal nationality
We have nothing to spare. There remains
to the thirty sovreignties that unite under the
flag of the Republic, only one ground that is
wholly common. In the Presidential election
no section is interested-as a section. The
President is the Representative of the whole
nation and as an agent he is intrusted with
the interests of the whole nation. And need
any intelligent man be advised that sectional
contests ought to be warily prohibited from
encroaching upon this last refuge of nation
atty 81
1t is obvious that return to the legitimate
course of excluding strictly legislative ques-
tons from the Presidential canvass, will ex-
tinguish the most operative motive for per-
verting that election with sectional quarrels
So long as President-making is virtually law
making, so long different sections will of
course array themselves on legislative issues;
but when we elevate men to that high Office
-" honest, capable, faithful" MEN, instead of
mere politicians whose intrinsic deficiencies
are made up by an unexceptionable "plat-
form," then the local differences will present
themselves for adjudication at the appropriate
tribunal
These remarks have of course the most
general application. Based upon grounds
common to the whole Union, they require no
modification for North, South or West. No
body should complain of Southern men (for
example) for voting through their Congress
sional agents in favor of their sectional inter
ests, and forsecuring them if they can by fair
majority; but if they demand that the Presi-
dental election shall be perverted to secure
or fortify their local claims, they do violence
to the true spirit of our elective government,
and set an example which magnanimous
citizens of the other sections should be slow
to initiate The same reasoning applies
equally to the North-It is plainly inmate
rial to this argument whether the issue which
is employed to distract and pervert the Pres
dental canvass be one in which only certain
sections are interested at all, or one in which
different sections are adversely Interested
except that the latter is the more aggravated
case.
1t is a common trick of demagogues to
press local jealousies into the Presidential
election, for merely selfish purposes. Those
accustomed to note the doings of this useful
class of citizens, will not need to look about
them at the present moment for the first in
stances in which either a fourth-ratc polti-
clan or disappointed statesman has resorted
to sectional feeling to secure an eminencc,
or a noioricty, or at worst solace, which he
might we'll despair of upon any but partial
grounds. The fruits reveal the tree. When
in national election we are summoned to
cast our votes upon sectional issues, we are
to decide Immediately that dema-
yogues are behind the wires; and whatever
Jacket they may wear, whatever banner they
may float at masthead, or whatever preten-
'ions of disintcrcStedness they may make, we
nay be sure that selGshness or soured tenn
per is at the bottom of their zeal.
ITSIOS ,