The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1867-08-29

Time was when, if the brains were out,
party would die decently and quietly, and be
gathered to its fathers, without doing violence
to "the eternal fitness of things by an obsti-
nate posthumous association with things sea-
sonable and vital. But the Democrats
have changed all that. Gu They evident
ly mean to cheat Charon of his
due by deferring the trans-Styxian
journey of their defunct organization until lis
attenuation and lack of gravity make the
great ancestor of common carriers ashamed
to exact the customary obolus. Julius Caesar,
In consideration Of having been stabbed by
the daggers of a goodly number of eminent
Romans Of the old school, and having receiv-
ed incised wounds in such number, and of fsuch
length and depth, that a technical description
of them would make modern Indictment
distressingly ponderous, and in further con-
sideration OF the lapse Of score or so of CEN
turies since the Ides of March when the "hon-
orable men," in despair of being able to lift
up Olympus, tore it down-in consideration
of all these things, we say, great CAESARS
name-Julius being added for increased pre-.
cision and intensity-has become, by common
consent, typical and illustrative Of final and
lasting departure from this scene Of Things
To say, then, that a man or thing is as dead
as Julius Cesar, is to exhaust the resources
OF language for the expression of obso-
leteness, remoteness from life - death.
An individual who happens to figure as the
first member of that proposition is under
stood to be so far passed from existence that
Gabriel will be obliged to blow special o.ast
OF his trumpet in order to awake him in sea-
son to pass in his accounts at the final reck-
oning But the historical simile fails when
one has occasion to speak of the decease of
the Democratic party. IL one would speak at
its funeral he must invent new language
and new modes of thought. .f'i
The party being itself practical illustra-
tion of the philosophy Of the nihilists, that is,
a dream of a dream, and shadow of a shad-
ow, its ideas are necessarily nebulous, evan
escent and transitory. The canvass was COM
menced with great flourish of Democratic
trumpets about the taxation of government
bonds. At the State Convention the sachems
of the organization allowed themselves to be
lead "tenderly by the nose, as asses are" by
Smart. Bonds were to be taxed--must be
taxed Immediately. But they have since
found that political quackery of that sort will
not do, and they have suddenly become
strangely mute about that particular plank in
their platform. Beginning the contest with
bright hopes and unbounded zeal, they have
been driven from one indefensible position to
another until their original scheme has reach
ed the vanishing point. The Argus, goaded
into stating its exact position and afraid to
reafirm its original heresy, finally stammered
out that it was in favor of the bonds being
taxed by Congress. 1t had at last become
aware that the immunity from State and To-
cal taxation, accorded to the securities OF the
United States, rested upon something more
than recent legislation. 1t had found that
these securities were protected by constitu-
tional principles, based upon one OF the most
imperative laws of NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS..
So the Argus stepped back from the origina'
proposition, and, in doing so, fell over Preci-
pice at the foot of which 1t has lain IN s'lence
| ever since. In the first place, further renee
ton has probably shown it that Congress
cannot tax the bonds already issued on ac-
count of an implied contract not to do 50,