The Bedford gazette. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1805-current, 1864-03-18

and censorious surveillance of neighboring fami
lies, or neighboring communities? Does a maj
cease to be vlrtuous, because in addition I,
other virtues, he practices the discreet and peace
promoting virtue of rninding his own business
Besides the great cardinal fact on which W,
insist, that Northern Democrats have proved
their abhorrence of slavery by assisting in ex
pelling 1t from their own States and boiling th,
doors against Its return, they have expressed
public and constant satisfaction at all movemen
toward its abolition in other States, by the peo
pie OF those States, and equally decided depre
cations ot the arrest of such movements by i'm
pertinent outside interference. We could if ne
cessary, fill our columns to overfowing with
citations from the documents, speeches, and
writings of Democratic statesmen, in which i,
was urged as a strong point agains. the aboli
tion crusade of the last thirty years. that it had
put back emancipation in the border slave States.
Is this species of argument to be used by men
who approve of slavery and desire its contin-
uance7
The pro-slavery stigma attempted to be fixed
on Northern Democrats IS a calumny; it has
always been repelied as calumny throughout
the heated controversies which have prevailed
since the annexation Of Texas. Among South
Democrat The slavery issue was early merged
in the higher issue Of the right of the States
to control their domestic affairs, and it was only
by attacks on slavery that this right was as
sailed, they were led to defend the outpost as if
it were the citadel itself, and thereby furnished
pretext for the calumny against the Demo-
cratic party. But the Democrats of the North,
in rebelling this calumny, have steadily asser-
ted that it was not slavery which they wished
| TO uphold, but only the constitutional right of
| each State to determine for itself (as The North
ern States had done) when it would abolish
slavery, or whether it would abolish it at all.
The facts we have here stated are of such
general notoriety that no person tolerably ac-
quainted with our political history will be like
ly to deny them. Ii only remains to apply the
principles which underlie them to present issues.
keep in my house small aquarium and a
few canary birds, and my neighbor, whose taste
differs from mine, is snakefancier. He keeps
cage OF poisonous serpents, whose breath in
feet the atmosphere of his apartments and i'm
pairs the health of his family. | have no more
right to enter his house and kill or lineage his
serpents than he has to enter mine and break
my aquarium. But suppose he has disturbed
the peace of the neighborhood, and committed
ttsls'9 IN. es althnnuh
may, and if am summoned as one of posse
to assist in the arrest and the criminal ressts,
his snake-cage may be broken to pieces in the
melee, and the life trodden out of the Kissing
monsters, without any grounds of an action for
trespass
No magistrate could have issued warrant for
killing the serpents; but the officer of the law;
once legally in the house, is not responsible for
any damage which may incidentally be done in
overpowering resistance. Whether it be the
noxious snakes or costly porcelain dishes that
are destroyed, it is all the same. And so, when
our armies are legally within the Southern States
for the purpose Of overpowering resistance, those
who make the resistance have simply to thank
themselves whether it is their crops, their com
merce, or slavery that is incidentally destroyed.
/ Now, SO far as we observe any deviation from
the principles which we have thus stated IN the
form of a parable, it consists either IN an as
sumption that because the officer OF the law
is not responsible for damages necessarily incl.
dent to the discharge of his duty, he may there
fore do all other damage that he can; or IN the
contrary assumption that because the officer had
no original right to enter the house or kill the
snakes, he is obliged to leave them in good
health. Neither assumption is admissible. The
radicals argue as if it were the duty of the Of
ficcr, when once in the house, to lay about him
and do all the damage in hisp power.
But he cannot go beyond the necessity OF
executing the law. Even if the homicide was
committed because the mans neighbors quar-
relied with him about his snakes i. by no means
follows, as the radicals contend, that he snake
must be killed to remove the cause OF the hon.
icide and prevent its repetition The law runs
into no such whimseys. 1t merely justifies the
damage which may incidentally be done in its
own execution, and, in this respect, it regards
all kinds of property alike.
| When the South entered upon this war, they
deliberately exposed their slave property to the
perls and vicissitudes of a military contest, and
they must take the consequences. The Demo-
cratic party of the North steadfastly holds to
the same principle of nonintervention which it
has always insisted upon as the true constitu-
| tiona doctrine AS it would not interfere to
destroy or cripple slavery tho dsapproving it,
so neither will it interfere to save slavery from
the consequences to which its own friends have
exposed it.-IVorld.
| ARTEMUs WARD, in a recent letter, thus gives
his idea of reorganization:
81 never attempted to re-organize my wife
but once. l shall never attempt it again I'd
hin to n nrhlic dinner and had allowed myself