Washington sentinel. [volume] (City of Washington [D.C.]) 1853-1856, 1855-06-23
THE KNOw-NOTHINGs-sEyERAL
PLANKS IN THEIR NEW PLAT
FORM EXAMINED.


to our readers copious details of the late Know
nothing convention that commenced in feast,
only TO end in a fast. We accompanied those
details with such commentaries as we deemed
appropriate There are however, one or two of
the resolves OF that convention as extraordinary
they are suggestive, and impudent they
are unfounded, which merit a special notice.
There are homely lines that aptly illustrate
the condition Of the Know-nothing party They
run thus:
The drvll was sick, lhe devil monk would he;
The devil got well; the devil monk was he."
Those men who have been most famed for
wickedness are, when they come TO be sick, the
first to send for doctors and for priests. Their
troubled conscences make towards Of them.
Their sins come up in thick array before their
bloodshot eyes. They send for doctors. They
gladly take their pills, and will even swallow an
occasional bolus with resignation, They send
for preachers--those men whom they accus-
toned to abuse when in robust health They
absorb their pious counsels, and even submit
quietly to their sharp rebukes and here, by way
Of parenthesis, we may be allowed to say that
ministers are more than human if they do not
ate moments, when these blasphemous abusers
of the sacred cloth are weak, sick, and disabled
to pay them of in their own coin. Piety, even,
will justify such malice, when helplessness can
not resent it!
This example not lost upon the Know
nothings. They were "weak and wounded sick,
and sore They had been wicked, refractory,
and noisy. They had bet high on the Vir-
ginia elections and lost. They had incontnently
stad out late at night in strange and secret
places. If single, their mothers-if married,
their wives, did not know their whereabouts.
They had sadly abused religious sect in this
country. They had vfed the foreigners. They
had published garbed accounts of the sayings OF
Washington, Jefferson, and other of the Fathers
of the Republic against our foreign population.
Getting sick, it therefore natural that they
should get scared. Under the influence of this
fear, they most simultaneously and reverently
resolved that God is God, and mot Mahomet
butt Sam is his prophet. They piously and
penitentially sought TO make atonement for their
past trangressions by nod of recognition to the
great God that made them.
The next resolve Of the convention that we
propose to notice, is this which is digniied with
the mathematical and technical phrase of corol-
larry, to wit:
"a habit Of reverential obedience TO the laws,
whether national, State, or municipal, until they
either repealed declared unconstitutional
by the proper authority.
What spotless purity and immaculate inno-
cence =! Obedience to the laws Do our eyes
Il IL. 4
nothingsi Are they co-operators with those men
who have, in utter contempt Of law, crucifed
Catholics, RACED their churches to the ground,
and outraged the innocent and unprotected in
mates of convents' Are they co-operators of the
mobs that, in defiance Of law, outraged Cincin-
natl, Louisville, New Orleans, Chicago, and
Washington Are they co-operators with the
men who have shot or stoned foreigners broken
up the ballot boxes, and howled like wolves, at
midnight, along our streets and avenues, haras-
sing the sick and disturbing the well; They are.
lis comment necessary; But this comment--that
they abuse themselves most shockingy
Secondly, they resolve thus:
g A tender and sacred regard for those acts of
statesma nship which are to be contradistingushed
from acts Of ordinary legislation, by the fact Of
their being Of the nature of compacts and agree
ments; and so to be considered a fixed and settled
national policy"
What is the meaning of this' The meaning
is plain. II is assertion that the Missouri
compromise repealed by the last Congress) is
binding, and should be the standing aud perpetual
policy of the country. Being Of this dignity,
we must suppose, especially the whole Ne
braska- Kansds bill was deliberately 1--WE will not
say feloniously) ignored by the Know-nothing
convention, that it intended to favor indirectly,
If not directly the restoration Of the restridire
the RESTRICTIVE clause Of the Missouri compro-
mise Such is Know-nothing protection of
slavery and the South.
"Acts Of statesmanship!" Was not the re-
peal of the restrictive clause Of the Missouri
promise an "act Of craftsmanship" Was il not
an extraordinary ''act Of craftsmanship" Was
il not passed by Representatives both from the
North and South and is il not as binding as any
other extraordinary "act Of craftsmanship -
as any other ''compact or agreement Is it
not more binding than an unconstitutional "com-
pact and agreement"
Thirdly. They resolve as follows:
"Hostility TO the corrupt means by which
the leaders Of party have hitherto forced upon us
our rulers and our political creeds.
"Implacable enmty against the prevalent de-
moralizng system Of rewards for political subser
yiency, and of punishments for political indie
pendencc.
disgust for the wild hunt after office which
characterizes the age.
"These on the hand. On the other
Limitation Of The practice Of the purer days of
the Republic; and admiration of the maxim that
office should seek the man, and not man the
Office, and Of the rule that the Just mode of as
certaining fitness for office is the capability the
fathfulness, and the honesty Of the incumbent
or candidate"
Surely no set Of men ever before uttered such
pungent and biting sarcasms against themselves
Ridcule employed by their most relentless enc
mics could not have so stung them and so cx-
posed their hypocrisy! Know-nothingism re-
proving office-seekers, reprobating "the wild hunt
after Office, dcnouncing 'the demoralizing sys-
tenn Of rewards for political subserviency, and of
punishment for political independence" and re-