The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1858-10-21

of the Declaration of independence is to
speak of it as political will-o' 'the-wisT
Ia generality, sure to lead those who at.
tempt to follow it into sloughs and quag'
mircs. They have been driven to confess
and to proclaim that, in their own opinion
the men who labor with their own hands
are not fit to be trusted with political pow
er, unless it may be the right Of suffrage,
to be always exercised in elevating to Of
fee some slaveholding patron, never in
promoting the interests of Free Labor.
They now only parade the institution OF
Slavery as the only safe foundation Of re-
publican government. They speak ofthe
expectation of the abolition of Slavery.
entertained by Washington, Jefferson and
the other father. of the Revolution, as an
error, pardonable, perhaps, in them, but
which to-day is no longer to be tolerated,
so that even any suspected inclination
tow ard it, iu the slightest degree, ought
to be set down as an absolute disquaii-
cation to hold any Federsl Office.
Thus driven to abandon the fetch of
democracy, the slave bolders gave over
all their popular professions, or no longer
addressed them except to the most igno-
rant OF the back woods population, to the
hangers on about the City grog shops, or
to that uneducated portion of our immi-
grant population unable to read the news
papers, and who therefore continued to
lag some ten or twenty years behind the
times Turning away from the democra-
ey they addressed themselves to the aris-
tocracy of the Free Labor S,ates-to
those very merchants, manufacturer, ban
ke-s and capitalists. whom for forty years
they had overwhelmed and discredited
by the most malignant charges Of designs
to euslaEe their fellow citizens or to te-
tray and sell their country. They ap-
pealed to the conservative spirit and still
more mphatically to the money loving
and money making spirit of this part of
the northern community, setting
themselves forth as the real conservative,
conservatives from interest as we'll as
from prineiple-to whom alone the upper
crust of northern society could look to
save themselves from being drowned and
swallowed up by the scathing democracy
underneath. As in their former appeals
to the laborers OF the North, so in their
present appeal to northern capitalists and
employers, their great reliance has been
in so tightening those to whom they ad-
dress themselves as to make them inca
pable of any sound and sober judgment.
The working men were told and even in
duced to believe--so artfully was the play
kept up on their suspicious and prcjudi
ces~- that only by keeping the national
government in the hands of slave holders
could they save the country from being
betrayed or sold by the British, plunder-
ed by banks, impoverished BY tariffs, and
trodden under the foot of the moneycd
aristocracy. For the last ten or fifteen
years, the Shareholders cry has been that
only by keeping the national governmet
in the hands of shareholders can the u
uion be preserved, or the North itself be
saved from all the disorders, confusion,
violence and vulgarity of an unbridlcd
democracy. In former tines, the appeal
of the Shareholders was to the good, hon
est country farmers. Their appeal now
is to the great capitalists, rich merchants,
and lordly bankers. Then they looked
to the country for their N ain support, now
to the cities.
This last fetch served them very we'll in
putting Pierce and Buchanan into the
Presidential chair. But it is already a.
huDd daDtly manifest tha, the conservative
dodge can never serve their turn at all to
the extent of the Dem ocratic dodge
The Free Labor States are essentially
Democratic, and the time has long gone
by when the class of men who compose,
or did compose, our Silser-Gray Wings
have it in their power to give a political
complexion to any Free Labor State in
the Union. The immense vote cast for
For Fremont, followed up as it has beeui
at the recent elections, affords conclusive
evidence that this new slaveholding d cd ee
of conservatism and the safety of the T. |
MON has seen its best day. and can hard
ly avail for another Presidential election.
At last there exists in this country par
ty Republican not merely in name, but
in fact-a party based on the advocacy
of the rights and interests of Free Labor
as against the pretensions and usurpa-
tlons of slave holders. There is every
reason to expect that, with a moderate
exercise of good sense. this party-proyi-
ded it can keep itself tolerably free from
the iDtrigues and Influence of trading
dema8ogues and self-seeking politicians
will be able to triumph at the next Pres
dential election, and, in SO doing, to car.
~ back the administration of the Gov.
'rnment to those principles of justice,
equity and equal rights with which the
Administration of Washington set out
md to those principles of Democracy of
which Jefferson was the grea. expositor
- Tribune.