The Potter journal. [volume] (Coudersport, Pa.) 1857-1872, 1860-10-11


or watch in Justices court, when tw,
neighbors are litigating about its owner
ship. The horse question or watch CUES
ton is excellent business for the justice
aud lawyers to make fees, and for the
neighbors generally to get fun out of
and my friend General Nye was never 81
happy in his life as when attending suit,
before justices of the peace, settling thi:
eternal horse question and watch CUES
ton. Laughter.
The controversy is not with the negro
at all, but with two classes Of white men
one wko hasa monopoly of negroes, and
the other who has no negroes. One is
an nristocratic class, that wants to extend
itself over the new Territories and so re.
tain the power it already exercises; and
the other is yourselves my good friends,
men who have no negroes and won't have
any, and who mean that the aristocratic
system shall not be extended. There is
no negro question about it at all 1t is
an eternal question between classos-be
tween the few privileged and the many
unpriyileged-the eternal question be
tween aristocracy ard democracy.
4 Sorrowful world this will be when
/ that question shall be put to rest ; or
when it is the rest that it shall have, shall
be the same it has always had for SIX
thousand years the riding OF the priri-
legged over the necks Of the unpriyileged,
booted and spurred And the nation
that is willing to establish such an aris-
tocracy, and is shamed out of the defense
of its own rights, deserves no better fate
than that which befals the timld, the
cowardly and the unworthy.
1t is to-day in the United States the
same question that is filing Hungary,
and Is lifting the throne Of Caesar of
Austria from its pedestrals; the same
which has expelled the tyrant of Naples
from the beautiful Sicily and has driven
him from his palace at Naples to seek
shelter in his fortress at Gaeta. 1t is
not only an eternal question, but it is a
universal question. Every man from a
foreign land will find here in a America,
in another form, the jrrcpresSi6ie conflict
| Applause which crushed him out, an
exile from his native land.
Again, fellow citizens, am not quite
convinced that it is sound philosophy in
anything, at least in politics, to Danish
the principle Of giving paramount import
ance at any one time to enc idea If a
man wishes to secure a good crop of wheat
to pay off the debt he owes Upon his land,
he is seized with one idea in the spring
be plows, plants and sows; he gathers
and reaps, with a single leading idea Of
getting fcrty bushels to the acre, if he
can. If merchant wishes to be success
full, he surrenders himself to the one idea
Of buying as cheap, AMI selling as dear,
as he honestly can | would not give
much for lawyer who is put in charge
of my case, that would suffer himself,
when before the jury, to be distracted
with great many pleasing ideas. |
want one devoted to my cause. In the
church We have great many clergymen
who have horror of this one idea and
the negro question, but | think it was St.
Peter who had it made known to him in
a vision on the housetop, that he must
not have scattered ideas but there was
to be one idea only, that is of being salts
fed with everything else provided he
could only win souls to his Master And
Paul was very much after this spirit he
SAID he would be all things to all me0,
proeided he could save sCule souls.
There was in the Revolution one man
seized with terrible fanaticism, propelled
by one idea lie scattered terror all !.
through this continent; and when he pass
ed from Boston to the first Congress in
Philadelphia, deputations from New York
and Philadelphia went out to meet this
man of Que idea, and that Of national in
And still John Adams
proved, after all, to be public bencfac
tor. There was, during the Revolution,
another man of one idea that appeared to
bun in him SO ardently that he was re-
garded as the most dangerous man on the
aud q triple reward was offered
for his head. He actually went so far as
to take all the men of one idea in the
country. and suffer himself to take com
mand of them. That man was George
" Washington. His idea was justice, po-
itical justice. There was another mono,
naniuc Of the same kind down in Virgin
a; he, at the close of the Revolution, had
me idea, an eternal idea, and it even IN
,ludcd negroes and that was the idea of
equality. 1t was Thomas Jefferson. Now,
hough the Safe which reared him might
be glad if it could erase from his nonu-
uent at Monticello its sublime lnscrip-
ion, yet the world can never lose that
proud and beautiful epitaph, written by 5
limself: " Here lies Thomas Jefferson.
he author Of the Declaration Of Iude-
,eudeuce." ;