The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1851-04-17
To BE CONTINUED
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
PRINCIPLES THE FIRST - NAMES A SECOND
AIRY OBJECT.
From the Green Mountain Freeman.

From the Green Mountain Fireman.
The Burlington Courir, and some other Free
Soil papers, suggesting these days, the expedi-
ency of forming new organization of the friends
Of freedom on such basis as shall more efectually
rally on one platform all the opponents of the
slave power, taking Liberty and Democracy for
the watch word, and assuming, perhaps, some new
corresponding party appelation.
That there must be more thorough and eff
cient organization of the friends of freedom il
we do not mean to fold up our hands and submit
to be overridden and made the vassas of the slave
power we are fully conscious; but, at the same
time, we must be permitted to say that we have
little faith in the efficacy of names and less in the
plan of often changing them, which, experience
has shown us, is liable to subject party to false
imputations and give its opponents unjust and
unnecessary advantages.
The name, however, which was assumed by the
united party in Vermont, atthe convention of the
3lst of May, 1S49-that of the Free Democracy
seemed to be one which was not only required by
the circumstances, but one which WAS beautifully
appropriate in itself as combining the leading and
rightly viewed, the congenial ideas of the two
classes who had so cordially and tremendously
come together to battle for freedom under the new
banner they then unrolled to the breeze
Liberty and Democracy are indeed, or ought to
father of Democracy, and his creed also furnished
the principal groundwork Of the Free Soil party
And we all as Auti-Slavery men, Free Sellers, or
Free Democrats, believe that we constitute the only
true Democracy and that at this day, with our
aims to carry out the great leading idea of our
Government-equal liberty to alive only are
entitled 10 be called the National Democratic par
ty Bot there is another great party, entertain
ing very different creed respecting what we all
know is becoming the paramount issue of the day,
who claim also TO be the National Democratic
party, and are now very widely known by that
appellaton and it is moreover an appellation,
which, as applied to them, with their avowed pur-
pose of going with the South in sustaining the
worst of the compromise measures has become a
term of offence to the friends of freedom.
And we may readily see the jeaousies and sus-
picions the adoption of such name might intro
duce into our ranks, the confusion and uncer-
tainty il might produce, the wide door it might
open on one side to the unreliable accessions, and
the narrow if not an impossible one it might be
thought to leave for any accession on the other
side--the handle it might give our opponents,
and the cover it might afford for shutting polit-
clans who might thus he enabled to hail under one
flag and act under another
The name of Free Democracy, as we have said
is an appropriate and significant appellation for
our party hs AT present constituted. III mas now
become sufficiently distinctive Of our professed
united purposes of resisting the encroachments of
the slave power, and of restoring the now pervort-
ed functions of the General Government to their
legitimate scope and the basis of action on which
Jefferson and Madison left it. All true Democrats
should and will be satisfied with the name The
old anti-slavery men are now generally found raj
lying under it cheerfully-much more so, we
think, than they would be likely to do under any
such new one as has been suggested Massachu-
setts New Hampshire, Connecticut, and several
of the Western States, have adopted 1t to such an
extent, that it now promises to be the common
appellation by which the friends of free princi-
Piles are everywhere to be known and shall Yer
mont, then, the first to assume it, be the first to
seek to change il
We assume not the province of debating to the
party at large; but the consi deritions we have
named are sufficient, in our view, 10 make us nj
least pause before embarrassing ourselves with
the question Of new names or new organizations
other than to make the present more thorough,
more efficient, and more faithful to the great and
vital principles Of freedom which we stand pledged
to advance