Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1860-10-29
An Excellent Document.

An Excellent Document.
We have before us, in thin pamphlet can
/ Address TO the Electors of the Ninth Congress
sional District of Massachusetts, which every
voter should read carefully. 1t is devoted to
the issue between Mr.. Thayer and the republi'
can party, and discusses the various points in
the issue very ably and with much earnest
ness. 1t makes up the principal issue against
Mr.. Thayer on the facts as they stand on the
record, and then discusses his positions with
overwhelming effect. Here is one passage
from it =
"Mr Thayer, among his manifold reasons
for disrcgardng his promises and pledges,
urges the following dilemma, viz =
There is no need of congressional legisla-
ton, or else there is no use in it. If we have
the executive and the [supremel court there
! is no need of it. five have not the executive
and the court, there is no use in 1t. 1t is there
fore always either needless or useless, and is
always humbug
! What Can il be needless that congress leg
! islae constitutionally Tor a territory, because
the executive and the supreme court, who
have no constitutional authority to legislate for
it, approve of their doings The supposition
is only absurd and argument would be an in
suit to common sense.
Take, then, his alternative, and judge which
of two iollies is the'greater. BY what author
ity of political philosophy or of human expe-
rience in any age, does it follow, that it is use.
less for congress to legislate constitutionally
for the territories, because the president will
Veto or the supreme court will overrule their
legislation Is it needless for congress TO do
their duty, because the president or the SUI
preme court will not do theirs Is no legis-
lation to be attempted till the departments of
the government will agree TO it? The doct inc
is monstrous. All constitutional governments
contradict it in theory and in practice. Its
check on all progress-an end to all good gov
eminent. The horns of his dilemma gore
nothing but himself. But Mr.. Thayer, to jus
tify broken pledges, in the sublime wisdom of
his craftsmanship tells his constituents that
he tDW not 90 for an abStrdction-no, not he, new.
er-till they have ceased to be distractions.
Neither promises nor pledges-no assurances
in whatever form, can bind him TO abstrac-
| tions-he has torsworn them all, and his con-
stituents may help themselves if they will.
But in what age lives this marvellous man,
! that he has grown so wise Have his visions
of emigration and land speculation all abroad
so absorbed his sight as to shut out of view
the worlds broad and deep-cut history? Did
he never read in a certain venerable book, of
that to save 1t, its parents were " not afraid of
the kings commandment" to stife it at birth
an abstraction graded in burushes among
crocodies, driven, for its life, to take shelter
under the volcanic curtains of indian"
coming out after forty years exile, from those
mountain defiles to "pague" oppression on
its guilty throne, and, after long faith and
patience delivering nation from the "house
OF bondage" where it had sighed and groaned
four hundred weary years
The shackles of ives tern Europe, rusty with
the blood of ages, were broken by distractions
pondered by a solitary monk in his cell, and
nailed by his intrepid hand on the door of the
great church at Wittemburg. The pilgrim
fathers boarded up thei- distractions of civil
and religious liberty, amidst the perils of the
Star Chamber, in the cold walls and pestilent
atmosphere Of starving prisons; they bore
them in exile to the dykes of Holland and the
mountain ramparts of Switzerland, and at
last, after untold sacrifices and sufferings in the
old world, brought their treasure CT abstrac-
tions across the Atlantic, to enrich a
new world with their priceless wealth.
Whence came the American revolution, but
from distractions, watched over and kept alive
in all but mortal sickness under the dark and
poisonous shade OF oppression Where had
been the freedom that now spreads ler ample
banner across this broad continent, but for
these distractions struggling with adversely
for long and dreary centuries They are the
seeds of all great reforms. They may be
trampled on by the iron heel of dcspotism
they may be dreamed of as silent and dead
but they awake from the dust, after long slum-
Der, like the dragons teeth OF old, in the shape
OF armed men. Italy, Naples, feel at this very
hour the upheaving Of distractions that have
been brooded over in dungeons, tortured on
the rack, and breathed on by the signs Of
countless victims of tyranny"