New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-10-25
sRNATOR MASON.

II.
attempts to set up a advantageous contrast be-
tween the existing Republican opposition to the
party or parties claiming the name OF Democratic
and just now holding the administration OF the
General Government, and the Federal and wing
opponents of the Democratic party of former times.
BY way Of giving color to this contrast it suits the
purpose of Dir. Mason to eulogize in high terms
theenlightt ned intelligence and patroticpurposeso
the leaders and members of those extinct parties
They had he tells us, for their great end aud AIM
their country's good, and the common good, differ
ING from the Democrats only as to the means OF at
tanning it, whereas, according to Mr. Macon, the
existing Republican opposition regards only Sec
tional aud personal interests, a1d is bent upon ac
complii hing the most disastrous purposes.
1t is not our purpose to centroyert the estimate
thus presented by Mr. Mason of the old Federal
and Wing parties. lie does no more than justice
to their patriotism, and their devotion to the best
interests of the country, according to their view OF
il. But Mr.. Mason will please to observe that,
while those parties were alive and active on the
public siege, they received DO such appreciation
from their political opponents. They were then
exposed to charges, insnuatiOns, suspicious, and
vituperatiobs, no less damnatOry and unjust than
are now buried by Mr.. Mason AID his political as
sociates against those whom he stigmatizes as
Black" Republicans. The Tederalists, incud-
ing such men as Adams, Hamilton, and large
proportion of the most distinguished leaders of the
Revolution, we're held up to suspicion aud pubic
odium, especially throughout the Southern States,
as at heart opposed TO those very principles on
which the Revolution had been successfully
carried through, and secretly plotting to over
throw our republican institutions and TO establish
a monarchy in their place. The worst things said
of Abraham Lincoln hardly equal the attacks
made upon John Adams and his political prlncl-
pies when he was President of the United States
and candidate for reelection. Subsequently, the
Federalists were freely charged with wishing to
reduce the United States to condition OF colonial
yassalage to Great Britain SIS willing to sacrifice
all the rights of the nation and the citizens to the
chance of making little money BY trade, and
finally, with intending to dissolve the Union, and
in tie war then pending to take sides with Great
Britain.
Nor did the Wing party, so long as that
party actually existed and struggled for power,
receive any greater justice at the hands of its OPP
ponents. The Wings were represented as quite
overlooking the interests of the great body of the
people, and az having no other object except to
promote, by means of banks and tariffs, the en-
REGIMENT of few capitalists.
Just as baseless as these old and now exploded
charges against the Federal aud Republican par
ties, is the allegation, which Mr. Mason makes the
great point of his speech, that the purpose Tor
which the Republican party has been formed Is the
abolition Of Slavery in the Southern States. NO
man knows better than he that the Republican
party has been called into existence entirely as
defensive and not as an aggressive party. 1t was
the annexation of Texas, for the avowed purpose
of giving to the Slave Power an increase of terri
toria influence, that FIRST aroused the sentiment out
of which the Republican party has grown. Pre-
yiOusly 10 that bold stroke at perpetuatiDg IN the
hands of the shareholders the control of the Fed
eral Government, the Anti-Slayery sentiment, as
Mr.. Mason himself shows, though not without
spokesman or two in Congress. was without
any political influence. If since that tune q
great party has sprung up on the basis
of opposition to the Entertainments of the Slave
Power, it has been because those encroachments
have given occasion for such party; have made
it, in fact, political necessity. If devotion to
the South-lneaning thereby devotion to the slave
holding inteIest-be such an excellent and praise
worthy thing in Northern statesman as Mr..
Mason represents in his high strained euloyy upon
John C.. Calhoun, upon what ground, We should
Ike TO know, is devotion to the Nort5--meanlng
thereby devotion to the interests of Free Labor
to be denounced in Northern statesmen as SEC
tional, unpatriOtic, and inconsistent with a due
regard to the common interests
The charge against the Republicans of being
sectional, aud therefore an unpatriotc, party,
certainly comes with an i'll grace from an orator,
who, at the very same time, admits that his own
party lie equally sectional Mr. Mason frankly
confesses that the refusal to submit to the nomina.
ton of DOuglas was in fact dissolution of polti-
csl connection with the Northern DemOc ais
indeed, a dissolution Of the Democratic party. If
it be very outrageous and unpatriOtic thing for
seventeen or eighteen Free States to vote together
for Lincoln, what is to be said of fifteen Slave
States voting together for Brecknridge7 All that
can be said seems to be that, since the slave
holders have seen fit to put the Presidential
issue upon so exclusive basis that nobody
at the North, not even their own former partisans,
can be found to go with them--for Dir. Mason re.
CARDS the Douglas men as little better than the
Republicans-tbey have nothing to do but submit
quietly to a political defeat which they seem to
have courted That sectional struggle for power