Burlington free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1827-1865, 1860-03-09

uOuDb uDOu tuC COIIOCJuCooO u tllI5 udIk DIC-
ture, 90 far as the southern groups upon the
canvass are concerned, but l must be indulg-
ed in the opinion that l can pronounce as &C
c~urately concerning the northern or Repub-
lican representatives here as any one. l
know their public haunts, and their private
WAYS. We are not a hostile Repub-
lie, or representatives of one. We
confer together, but only as the organs OF
every party do, and must do in a political
system which obliges US to act sometimes as
partisans, while it requires US always to be
patriots and statesmen. Differences OF
opinion, even on the subject of slavery, with
us are political, not social or personal differ
ences. There is not one disunionist or dis
loyalist among us all. We are altogether
unconscious of any process of dissolution
going on among US or around US. We have
never been more patient, and never loved the
representatives of other sections more, than
now. We bear the same testimony for the
people around US here, who, though in the
yerv center where the bolt of disunion must
fall first and be most fearful in its effects,
seem never less disturbed than now. We
bear the same testimony for all the district.
and States we represent. The people of the
North ae not enemies but friends and
brethren of the South, faithful and true
as in tie dave when death has dealt his
arrows promiscuously among them or com
mon battle fields of freedom.
We will not suffer ourselves here to dwell
on any evidences of Il different temper in the
South; b t we shall be content with ex-
pressing our belief that hostility that is not
designedly provoked, and that cannot
provoke retaliation, is an anomaly that must
be traced to casual excitenents, which can.
not perpetuate alienation.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
A canvass for a pres idential election, in
some respects moro important, perhaps, than
any since 1900, has recently begun. The
House of Representatives was to be organized
by a majority, while no party could cast
THE HARPER's FERRY RAID.
more than a plurality Of votes. The gloom
of the late tragedy in Virginia rested on the
Capitol from the day when Congress assem-
bled. While the two great political parties
were peacefully, lawfully, and constitution
ally, though zealously, conducting the great
national issue betw en- Tree labor and capital
labor for the Territories to it's proper solu-
ton, through the trials of the ballot, operat-
ing directly or Indirectly on the various de-
partments of the Government, a band of
exceptional men, contemptuous equally of
that great question and of the parties to the
controversy, and impatient of the constitu-
tional system which confines the citizens of
every State to political action by suffrage in
organized parties within their own borders,
inspired by an enthusiasm peculiar to them
selves, and exasperated by grievances and
wrongs that some Of them had suffered by in
roads of armed p%ropagandists of slavery in
Kansas, unlawful as their own retaliation
was, attempted to subvert slavery in Virginia
by conspiracy. ambush, invasion and force.
The method we have adopted, of appealing
to the reason and judgment of the people, to
be pronounced by suffrage, is the only one
by which free government can be maintained
anywhere. and the only one as yet devised
which is in harmony with the spirit Of the
Christian religion. While generous and
charitable natures will probably cOncede that
John Brown and his associates acted on ear
nest though fatally erroneous convictions,
vet all good citizens will nevertheless agree,
that this attempt to execute an unlawful
purpose in Virginia by invasion, involving
s@ervile war. was an act of sedition and trea-
son, and criminal in just the extent that it
affected the public peace and was destructive
Of human happiness and human life.
ITS ACTORS.
1t is a painful reflection that, after so long
au experience of the benehcent working of
our system as we have enjoyed, we have had
these new illustrations IN Kansas and Nir-
GINA of the existence among US Of a class OF
men so misguided and so desperate as to
seek 10 enforce their peculiar principles by
the sword, drawing after it q need for the
further illustration by their punishment of
that great moral truth especially applicable
in 8 Republic, that they who take up the
sword as a weapon of controversy shall per-
ish by the sword. In the latter case, the
lamented deaths of so many citizens. slain
from an ambush and by surprise-all the
- le because they were innocent
agency in far distant fres-the deItns e,o
Of the offenders themselves, pitiable. although
necessary and just. bscause thev acted under
delirlum, which blinded their judgments 10
the real nature of their criminal enterprise
the alarm aud CONSERVATION naturally ava
kened throughout the country, exciting for
the moment the fear that our whole system,
with all its securities for life and liberty was
coming to an end-a fear none the more en-
nav tNhh NthNAhO1AAl hE-AhfoN"G ~
new chimeras to which the great leading
event lent an air of probability surely all
these constituted a sum of public misery
which ought to have satisfied the most NOR
bid appetite for social horrors. But, as in
the case of the gun-powder plot, and the
Salem witchcraft, and the New York colonial
negro plot, SO now the original actors were
swiftly followed by another and kindred class,
who sought to prolong and widen the public
distress by attempting to direct the indigna-
ton which it had excited against parties
guiltless equally of completely and Of sympa-
thy with the offenders.
POsterity will decide in all the recent cases
where political responsibility for public disas-
tiers must fall and posterity will give little
heed to our instructions. 1t was not until
the gloomy reign of Domitian had ended, and
liberty and virtue had found assured refug9
under the sway of the milder Nerva, that the
historian arose whose narrative of that period
of tyranny and terror has been accepted by
mankind.
The REPUBLICAN PARTY THE UNION Party.
The Republican party being thus vindi-
Gated against the charge of hostility to the
South, which has been offered in excuse for
Az LlSAihOOo " OIl IColNItDCt III |
the event of its success, l feel we'll assured
that it will sustain me in meeting them in
the spirit of the defender of the English
Surely. they that shall boast as we do to
be a free nation, and having the power, shall
not also have the courage, to remove, con-
additionally, every Governor, whether he be
The supreme or subordinate, may please their
,ancy with a ridiculous and painted freedom.
it to cozen babies, but are, indeed, under tv-
and servitude, as wanting that power,
is the root and source Of all liberty. to
of and economise in the land which
Sod hath given them as members of . family
n their own home and free Inheritance.
which natural and essential power
Vt a free nation, though bearing high their
reads, they can, in due esteem. be thought
10 better that slaves and vassals born, in the
enare and occupation of another inheriting
ord, whose government, though not illegal
n intolerable, hangs on them as a lordly
courge, not as a free government"