Weekly North Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1850-1858, 1854-08-02
Mr. Graham, the Federaiist.


The Hllisborough Recorder says MIR. Graham !" is
willing" to see Free Suffrage established, provided
the Constitution is amended at the same time SO as
to protect the landholders against oppressive taxa
ton; and that paper of Wednesday has the assur-
ance to attempt argument in favor of this propo
sition.
It is now provided by the Constitution that each
Commoner shall possess in fee hundred acres of
land, and each Senator theee hundred acres. 1t is
not proposed by the advocates of Free Suffrage to
alter that instrument in this respect Is not this of
ITSELF sufficient guarantee that the landholders will
not be oppressed, even admitting disposition
the part of the non-andholders to oppress them?
Is 1t to be reasonably supposed that landholders,
Themselves representatives. aoouM cote IN the Legisla
ture to impose undue and unjust burdens upon the
lands9 But suppose they were to do so, would not
all classes at once feel it in the enhanced prices of
produce? Would not the landholders increase their
rents? Whoever the soil in free country
like this where restrictions on sales and trade are
unknown, holds power over all other classes and in
terests.
There are in this State about forty thousand free
hold against fifty thousand Commons voters.
These freehold voters go en- asse to the Senatorial
box and by and of themselves elect fifty Sepators;
and then they turn to the Commons box and cast
forty thousand votes for the Commons. They, there
FORE Substantially control both branches Of the As
sem6lv; or, if they do not, they might, bya comb-
nation, assume all power to themselves. And yet
we are called upon by these Federaists to protect
the ftyacre freeholdcrs before extending to all free
white the right to vote for Senators!
But we dony that the non-freeholders would, if
they had the power, opprcss the feeholders. There
arc thousands of persons, owners of millions of dol
lars worth Of real estate, who not ftyacre free
holders; and in addition to this the nonfreehodcrs
embrace in their number merchants, lawyers, ply
sicians, mechanics, schoomasters, miners, editors,
&C., who are dependent for success and prosperity
the landed interests generally. A simple state
ment of such facts amounts to an unanswerable ar
gument. No, the truth is Mr. Graham and his mouth
piece, the Recorder, fear the people-doubt Meir co.
pacity for se.g0rernment, xnd aesh to protect tile
| people against themselves That is the secret And
this, too, from who though cautious and cold,
! has been made all that he is by the people-voted
for by the non-frecholders of Orange-honored by
the Commons voters, well by the frceholders,
with two elections to the Chief Magistracy of the
State and lastly sustained by hundreds of thousands
of non-frceholdcrs throughout the Republic for the
second Office in the gift of the people! Now he
turns his back upon them-now he declares, when
canvassing for the avors of privileged class, that
he fears, unless the tyacre men are protected, all
other classes Of our citizens soiU combine to inure
and oppress them! Away with such Federalism
such distrust of the popular power thDi Rnt il
is worthy, in every respect, of the man who voted
in 1884 against extending to tho people the right
| to elect their own Governor.