New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1854-10-03

if made OF the rottenest Eastwood The acting
President gave US Do more aid and comfort be-
cause of it than he would have done without
that 10, be gave us none At all. Toombs and
Stephens did not come back tous because others had
succeeded in game which they had previously
played and lost. The progressive and free
soued could be made TO see nothing but the detest-
able plsnks in our PLATFORM while Slavery and its
Northern seryitors would see nothing Of the plat
form but 8 tall form, plumed and epauleNed.
standing thereon with slight, pale, agile in
domitable detester of the Compromises al his
bach. 1t was in vain that Gov Seward declared
that be would accept no Office from Gen. Scott.
The fact that be felt called upon to make this
declaration created more terror than Il dspelled.
Those tho dreaded or hated him remembered that
be had held no place under Gen. Taylor. We
went into the contest doomed, to come out Of It
annihilated; and Mr. Webster. 50 seldom mistaken
in his precedence unless misled By personal anbi-
ton, was never more clearly right than in bis dy
ing declaration that the contest then approaching
its close was the death-thrOe of the National wing
party.
That contest va, ended. Our party was not
merely beaten but demolished. We hoped thit
this disaster had secured to US few years OF
welcome exemption from political effort, resPonsl-
bility or care. That it did not was the fau't oil
Mr.. Stephen A. Douglas and those who lmPeAeu
and aided him to hurl new Grebrand into the
magazine over which the country was "eaH'!'
snxiously seeking rePose.
The mass of men are still ruled by names and
SYMBOLS. Despots and usurPers have often glIded
their iron sway with devices emblematic of Lib
e,ty and Equality. So lorg as the old flag floats
,bo,e him and the familiar voice commands, the
soldier fights en- indifferenty for or against Free
dom and Justice. And here is the reason Why
old psrty names and watchwords are still current
after all their significance has departed. There
is no sense in our people playing Wings and Dem
ocrats any longer after all the marrow there ever
was in the questions thus contrOverted has been
sucked out, leaving nothing but the dryest bones.
But the drill sergeants of this party IN one local
iy and that party in another find it easier to Sc
cure a majority by waving the old nag and
sounding the old slogan than in any other way.
1t is process which costs no headache taxes no
faculty but that of external vision. Here is our
g flag, as you well know; there is our ad7ersa-
RES, which you have often cOnfrOnted-now
"po in and win such is the drill-sergeant's
exboIta;ion to which the rank and file respond
by hurrah and charge.
The politics of our State in 1854 hinge on these
two live questions aud no more-namely Shall
1.-THE doctrine frat embodied by Jefferson and
" sustained by the fathers Of our Republic with
tout one notable exception, that it is the right
land duty of the Federal Government to inhbt
land prevent the spread of Slavery under our
National flag in territories owned and gov
"erned By the Nation, be upheld or, shall the
opposite doctrine of Douglas and Cas-, which
"aaserts for bare majority of the first fifty five
hundred FIVE thousand. or some other number
"(tbey will not tell us how many of ~hie settlers
on a territory nov TO civilization, tho right
Ito legalize and establish Human Bondage
therein, in defiance even of the unanimous re-
- mODstrt nee Of the twenty-five Millions of
- American People, who are at least cOpartners
- with the former in the ownership aud right to
possess said territory: in defiance also Of the
- minority of white pioneers, and in utter de-
q fisnce of all settlers of diverse cOlors ," The
swindlers in the name Cf Popular Sovereignty
allow no voice to the Race who are 10 be ensayed
if the decision goes against them the first thous
and or so Of pioneers may be nine tenths black
OF bronze cOlOred, all free and all intensely hostile
TO Slavery, with forty nine of the white hundred
heartily agreeing with them in their hostility to
the peculiar institutions; and vet the ffty-one
remaining whites may oyerbear their nine hundred
aud forty nine fellow pioneers and establish
Slavery in defiance not only of them but of the
other Twenty FIVE Millions of American People.
And this is Popular Sovereignty, as embodied
in Douglass Nebraska bill, now law of our
Union, and sustained by Greene c. Bronson and
Horatio Seymour, candidates for Governor OF
New-lork. What are all other National ques-
tons still pending when compared with that
raised by this atrocious assumption
In our State there is just one question which
smOunts to anything for our Canal policy is set .
tied and immovable. This question is" Shall
- the sale of intoxicating drinks be efectuaIly
prohibited by law" Aiyron H. Clark says
Yes; Bronson and Seymour say No. but differ as
to whether the contempt universally felt for the
present National Executive shall be openly ex-
pressed or more decorously cherished in silence.
That is question as TO which good deal might
be pausibly said either tide, if the public at.
tention were not just now engrossed by matters
of eraver consequence.
The only political movement of the current
year which has any enduring significance was the
Convention at Saratoga Springs.
That Convention embodied in its resolves the