St. Charles City Republican intelligencer. [volume] (St. Charles City [Charles City], Iowa) 1857-1861, 1860-08-09
An Exquisite DemagOguc.

! There is q calm assurance in an
American dcmagoGuc, quiet rcli-
ancc upon the ignorance, stupidity,
Indifference or corruption of the pco-
pie on whom he operates, which can
be parallelcd in no other country. OF
American damagogucs, the most dis
tinguished of his class in these par
ticuiars, the man who is most indiilcr
cnt about what he says if he can
make it serve his immediate purposes,
and the man who preSumcs most upon
the ignorance and thoughtlcssness Of
| the great mass Of society, is Stephen
4. Douglas stumping New England
for the Presidency.
We may add, further, that one of
the most remarkable displays of his
superlative assurance and prcsump-
ton may be found in the speech lie
delivered in Boston, in the course of
which he said
"For years the slavery question has cxcIud-
ed other matters of national importance from
Congress. If you ask your representatives
! why measures Were not taken to increase the
revenue instead of authorizing II loan, the
response is that there was no time to do it
no time to pay your honest debts. If you
, ask why there is no Pacific Railroad, why
there is no overland mail route, and no mail
steamers, you are told that there was no time
| to attend to these matters. The slavery qucs-
| ton occupied all the time. Thus the CONNER
cial shipping, agricultural and manufacturing
| interests are neglected for want of time, be-
cause Of the slavery question. There never
will be time. unless you Danish the slavery
question from the halls Of Congress. and refer
it back to the people according to the Demo
cratic party"
OF course the speaker must have
assumed that his hearers and read
ers had forgotten that he had been
for ten years and more the most &C
tive minister to slavery agitation in
Congress that he contrived and ne
gotated the plan for the repeal OF
the Missouri Compromise, and that he
was one of the very first to take what
he deemed the short cut to the Prcsi.
dcncy, showing that in devotion and
servlity to the slavery interest he
stood like Saul in Israel, head and
shoulders above all his countrymen
lie must have assumed that this was
all forgotten, or never known, or il
known and remembered, that very
few of the New England people really
felt as they professed to feel in regard
to it, and that it was merely an acci
dent that Massachusetts sent a man
of Charles Summers political opinions
to the United States Senate, instead
of one who would stand quietly by
and see another senator like Charles
Sumner beaten over the head and
nearly killed by ruilian, while dis
charging his official duty.
But though it is the psychological
popularity of dcmagogucs to suppose
everybody as Indifferent in matters OF
principle as they are themselves, and
a great deal less intelligent, their &C
tons are not on that account less wor
thy of being watched, nor their ut
teranccs Of being studied Their in
stincts for the detection of a change
in the currents of public opinion are
wonderfully acute, and in that point
OF view this speech of Douglas is sig
nilicant
He has discovered that the negro
strain which he and his partizans
have been playing SO long is no long.
or IA dulsom melody" at least in the
Northern States, and that the slavery
: question must be put out of politics
la this Inc is undoubtedly correct