Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1867-05-01

snC "oAAtH6A&Sn serve t1elr PfO5egeS
after election. We quote from the Hart
ford Conn Times:
IN Portland the most shameful coer-
cion Of workingmen has for yesrs been
practieed by the republican employers.
Men were told BY open proclamation
that they should lose their situations II
they dared to vote the democratic ticket.
That shameful course gave the town
last year to b radicals, but thew met
some difficulty In repeating the pro-
gramme this year, for the workingmen
organized a protective league, and an
nouDced their purpose to vote. Most Of
them did vote aud they carried the
town, gaining sixty or seventy votes.
For this assertion OF their rights as
treelnen, the quarrymen were notified
by the quarry owners that their services
will not e required for the year to Gomez
we also learn the fact that the ssre-
publican managers of the factories ia
Rockwell have discharged fifty OF their
employees who voted the democratic
ticket; and many of The dis
charged men have dependant families
and need assistance
This is no eleeti0neering statement,
bat q positive fact, It proves the hos
tility Of the bond-holding, radical aris-
toeraey 10 workingmen.
I
That country cannot properly be said
to be in the best n 3 free republic, in
which the right Of opinion, speech, or
conscience, is not jealousIy guarded ansI
secured to every man. All these are
involved in the right to Uots as one
p~leases; for the vote of a citizen is the
most plain, distinct, emphatic and eifec.
tual expression and utteranes, in the
most unmistakahle Language, Of his
opinion and his right to think and say
what he pleases, lift be a merely abstract
one, not to be given expression and effect
to by his vote, is a very barren and
shadowy right.
II the employer Of operatives in mill,
factory or workshop, undertakes to con-
troll their votes, by threatening dismissal
from employment as the penalty of a
failure to vote the ticket acceptable to
him, his course is universally regarded
as tyrannical and anti-democratie, if not
infamous. 1t is no part ofthe c~onsidera-
ton Of the wages he pays them that they
shall vote as he orders.
It may at once be admitted that, upon
a change of administration, those off,
GERS of the Government who occupy po-
litieal stations, and the duties of whose
offices are to give effect to the political
views of the party that holds the reins
of Government, should be men of like
views with those in power. Clashings
and collisions, and impediments in the
way Of the proper action of the Govern
ment, would else be the consequence,
producing an ineoherent ineficiency.
But where officers or employees have
no political duties legitimateIy to per
form, the only reason for which they
should be removed is, that others al be
had to perform their duties in a better
manner and more efficiently for the
same compensation, or as well and
efficiently for a less compensation, in
which case the public interest warrants
and even requires q change. They
are not the officers or employees of a
party, but of the country /; and to use
such offices as the muniments of politi-
cal warfare, is in substance the same,
and as indefensible as to use the moneys
in the public treasury for the same pur-
pose. To remove SUCH an officer for hav-
ing simply exercised his democratic
right TO vote as his conscience and sense
Of duty to the country dictated, is to
punish him for loyalty performing with
uprightness and honesty the highest
duty that a freeman owes his country.
To hold out in advance to q clerk or
laborer, the support Of whose family,
their daily bread depends on the contin-
of his employment, the threat of
the punishment of dismissal from work
in case he dares to vote as his conscience
imperatively commands him to do,
whether that threat be expressed, or
only implied in the constant and known
usage Of party, is the fruitful mother of
many and very great evils.
The chief wealth of a Republic, as
well as her great power, consists in the
manly independence and frank and open
integrity of her sons. The more of them
she has, the prouder she has q right to
be the more potent and the more safe
in her pride of place, she certainly is.
Every such manly indeFs dent freeman,
when transmitted by any process into a
shrinking and timid sycophant, who,
through fear, dares not openly vote ac-
cording to his opinion, or who becomes
toe corrupt to do SO, purchased in mar
ket overt by the bride Of Office, is a man
lost to her. She is the poorer by SO much
as the former value of that man and
when this process becomes widespread
and general, the consequences are fright
full, and portend her downfall.
We shudder at the wild tale ofthe bold
knight, changed by a magic nraught,
the decoetion of a potent herb, into a
trembling coward, wailing like a woman
at the sight of danger, and fleeing basely
from a drawn sword. If we were to
learn that now there went about among
us, invisible, a mighty sorcerer, that
with unhOly, dsvilish magic every year
changed ten thousand manly and free
spoken American freemen into so many
abject thralls, that could, If need were,
be marshaled into regiments and led or
driven to the polls, there to vote con-
trary to their eonsciences, and against
what they in their hearts believed to be
the true interests of the country, how we
should stand aghast at the thought, and
tremble lest he should exercise his infer
nal sorcery on ourselves, or on some
one whose name and fame are dear
to usi
PARTY is that magician. This prac-
tice of forcing men to vote against their
convictions, or furnishing them for voting
according to them-anti-demoeratic, be-
canse the fundamental principle of
Democracy is that every citizen has the
right 10 vote, and that each has that
right, perfect and entire, to vote as his
conscience commands, without force or
fear, or the apprehension of punishment
or loss for doing so-is not less injurious
to the public morals than debasing to the
voter so constrained, if he submits
and. moreover, to buy q vote with
money, which is made an infamous
crime by law, is no more bribery, in its
essence, than TO buy it with an office in
prospect of the continuance of one in
possession-the alternative being dis
missal and distress. IF every man in
the country could be made precisely
what the clerk or laborer is who thus
submits to coercion, it is evident that all
m~anliness and independence would have
died out of the heart Of the country, and
that real Democracy would no longer
exist, for then the people would not gov
ern, but instead be ruled by their mas
tiers.
THE INDIAN wAR.
A Station burned by Cheyennes-A small
Party Massacred.
special to the st. Louis Republican,
OMAHA, April 28.-The news Of the
loss of a mail party between Laramie