The Portland daily press., 1866-01-23
Tuesday Morning, January %, 1868.
The lncurables In Congress-.

|. 1t is Swift, we believe, who proposed hos
pital for the incurables, as he called them, or
for that class of men who are so inveterately
fixed in their folly that they never either learn
or unlearn anything In vain the seasons roll,
in vain spring time and harvest come round,
in vain the years chase each other and bring
man from birth to maturity, and from maturi-
ty to decay; in vain empires rise and flourish
and decay; the pompous procession of the
things of life affect them not; they are what
they always were, immovable in belief un-
changeable in prejudice, as steady to their own
idea as the needle is to the pole.
OF this sort appears to be that small band
of mourners in Congress who assume the
name of Democrats, and who so solemnly rise
one after another, like the speakers at a fl-
neral, to declare their conviction that .this
government is a white mans government"
No one of them varies the strain at all, any
more than hurdy-gurdy changes its tune;
not one OF them has single original thought
to present, scarcely so much as an illustration;
and yet they persist in iterating and reiterat-
government is white mans government"
The old Democratic party in the days of its
power aud glory, when it had not only name
to live, but principle Of vitality, used to boast
that this country was the home of the exile
and the refuge of the oppressed. Manhood,
elsewhere down-trodden, was taught to look
to the young republic as an asylum in which
it found its last fetters broken and its every
liberty secured. So the governments that our
fathers instituted were not governments of a
class or race, or peculiar set of men at all,
but governments of universal human justice,
designed to protect the rights and further the
welfare Of all men, without regard to religion,
race, or personal peculiarly. "
These were the generous and noble ideas of
the original Democratic party - the ideas
which commended it to the popular mind and
heart, and it was not until its leaders had CO.
habited with slavery, that it began to teach
any other doctrine. When it had defiled it,
self with the harlotry of the plantation, it
could find no excuse for its debasement but in
these puerile and shameless fallacies about the
distinction of races, and the divine right Of
the white skin. Slavery had no political pow
er, and there was motive why the Buchan-
ans and Pierces and other weak creatures
should fall into its embraces. N
But slavery is now dead; its political and
social supremacy are alike destroyed; and
there is no occasion for anybody to roll him
self in its filth in order to curry its favors.-
When the Chanleys and Rodgerses and Boyers
and Randalls and other degenerate remains of
the Democratic party rise, one after another,
to utter their pitiful nonsense about "the
white mans government" we cannot but ex-
claim in compassion, All! quanto mutaoo db
lila! Where are the old thunderers of the
Democratic party, whose voices rung like
trumpets blowing to the charge, when they
talked of the free and equal rights of allmen?
Are these the men to wear the robes Of those
giants? Are these the defendants of our
Jacksons, and Bentons, and Wrights, and
Hofmans, who once led US to victory.
No; if the Democratic party would ever be
revived, if it would wipe out the fatal odium
it incurred during the war, if it would rally the
people once more to its standard, it must dis
miss such blind guides as now take its name
guides as blinded to the midday radiance of
the nineteenth century as the owls of the
churchyard-as incurable in their errors as
they would be if they had just stepped out of
tomb Of the middle ages, and were learning
an American gospel of freedom for the first
time.-lN. Y, Evening Post.