Bradford reporter. [volume] (Towanda, Pa.) 1844-1884, 1855-09-08

a project to modify the tariff was rejected /;
the French spoliation bill, the harbor improve
ment bill and the Dix lunatic bill, were passed
and, but for the Presidential veto, would have
become the laws of the land, to the waste of
the public money and the disgrace of the DEM
ocratic creed. And the Collins bill, as fragrant
a piece of leg~alized swindling as was ever per-
petrated, was finally passed, over and in spite
of Mr.. Pierce's veto. The strange and startling
spectacle was presented of a party President
compelled to resist a party's violations of its
own principles-of a democratic President OPP
posing the wild, wasteful and corrupt measures
of the democratic party.
"Now, what does all this teach9 What,
but that the old party questions are buried
or, rather, that fixed constitutional principles
no longer form the lights Of party action, and
that the federal government is the convenient
instrument of the numerical majority, regard
less of right or of the constitution. There is
but a single question now upon which parties
can be rallied-a question unlike all others
which have arisen in the government, not ma
%tional, but simply and markedly sectional-the
question of slavery. A thousandfold more in
tense than in lS47. Abolition has shattered
every organization, democratic, wing and
know-Nothing, which dared oppose its progress
and subordinated every other party principle
to the one absolute test. 1t matters not what
position may be assumed upon other questions
the party which bids for northern support,
must, on this, bow before fanaticiSm. Can
any national party, therefore, command success
at the North, upon terms short of a surrender
and betrayal of the South Can the demo.
cratic party do it, withered and shrivelled up
as it is by the breath of ~freesoil ? Must not
a question, purely sectional, of necessity make
parties sectional also Ought not the union
of the North for aggression, compel a union
of the South for resistance Z"
We marvel that the Mercury should speak
of the union of the North against the South.
The geographical division of parties began at
the South, and the reason why there is no long
er a wing or democratic party in that quarter
of the Union is, that the combination of politi-
clans for the protection of local interests was
formed there at an early period, and has broken
up the old parties. The South has been united
against the North for some years past. 1t pre-
sented a common front against the North in
the enactment of Fugitive Slave bill. 1t has
united against the North forcing the Nebraska
act-the immediate cause of the present agita-
tion-through the two houses of Congress-
At this moment it is united against the North in
encouraging and upholding as right the profit
gate and brutal proceedings of the Missourians
in Kansas. Not a syllable in reprobation of
these outrages has been uttered at any public
meeting of the citizens of the South. The South
is united against the North in maintaining the
doctrine of the nationality of slavery-a doc
trine which carries that institution where the
federal constitution has force, not only into
the territories, but even into the free states.-
The unanimity of the South on these points is
so general, and has endured so long, that it has
weaned men from old party associates. At the
North there is by no means the same universal
agreement in opinion and feeling. If the con
viction has arisen among any very large number
that a new party organization has become
necessary to protect the free states against
these agressions, it is of late origin, and has
but just begun to influence the minds of the
MISUNDERSTANDING Post.