The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-04-19
The Democratic Party and its Influence
upon the Country.

WE notice, floating about in Democratic jour
mails, an argument for their party which is evil
IDENTIFY thought to be of considerable strength.
It's statement runs after this sort-That the
Democratic party was in the almost con-
tinual possession and exercise of the political
power of the nation for a period of nearly
sixty years before the Rebellion, and that
during all this period the nation enjoyed a
striking degree of prosperity and growth;
ergo, the Democratic party was the cause of
this national prosperity and growth.
Now, granting the assumed premises Of this
argument to be correct, the conclusion would
by no means follow. One of the most ordi-
nary tricks of the sophist is to assume the
relation of cause and effect between things
which are merely co-eXistent or successive.
This fallacy is also one which partisans, re-
formers, and one-idea men generally are very
apt to fall into. We have heard vegetarians
ascribe nearly all the evils that flesh is heir to
to the use of meat as food. Their argument
is that people eat meat and people are sick;
therefore the eating of meat is the cause of
sickness. The sold, ancient man" who
having observed that Goodwin Harbor began
to fill with sand at about the time that Tenter-
den steeple was built, gave his testimony
before the Kings Commission that the cause
of Goodwin sands was the building of Tenter-
den steeple, has left numerous intellectual
progeny.
The prosperity of our country has been due
to our free institutions, the virtue and intelli-
gence of our people, and the boundless field of
operations which new continent opened for
all their energies. We should have had all
these had the Democratic party never had an
existence. We suffered no diminution of
these causes of prosperity during the admin
istrations of John Quincy Adams, William
Henry Harrison, and Zachary Taylor, neither
Of them Democrats in the partisan sense of
the word.
While, on the one hand, we have derived none
of the causes of our national prosperity from the
Democratic party, on the other hand that party
has hindered many of those causes from opera
ting to their full extent, so that, although we
have prospered to acertain degree, we have not
prospered so signally, so widely, as we might
have done had the Democratic party been more
true to the great principles of free govern
ment. We have prospered in spite Of that
party; and it is one of the most convincing
proofs of the inherent strength of our free
institutions, that they have been enabled to
survive the deadly antagonism between partisan
Democracy and public freedom. History will
record as the distinguishing characteristic of
the Democratic party its devotion to human
- Tl,o he
fame will rest are gag resolutions, denials of
the right of petition, the rifing of the public
mails, Kansas Nebraska bills, Fugitive Slave
laws, Dred Scott decisions, Lecompton Consti-
tutions, and the like. We do not apprehend
that history will ever ascribe the prosperity
which the American people have enjoyed to
any of these measures. Slavery was a sectional
institution, now universally conceded to have
been wrong hostile by its very nature to our
free institutions, and incompatible with them.
Democratic support of that institution tended
directly to the final result of our gigantic
civil war. In estimating, therefore, the effect
which the Democratic party has had upon the
country, the ''benefts'' it has conferred upon
it, we must include the war of the Rebellion.
with its tremendous cost of treasure and life.
1t is true that the war has been prOvidentially
overruled to a grand and glorious result but
the Democratic party is no more entitled to
credit on that account, than the Jews who
murdered our Saviour are entitled to credit
on account of the blessings of Christianity. A
truthful record of the Democratic party is
that it ruled the cOuntry-while it did rule il
in the interest not of freedom but of slavery
and that it closed its career by instigating
planning, and waging gigantic Rebellion
whereof the avOwed object was to overthrow
our system of free government, and erec
upon its ruins a vast slave empire, founded
upon the cornerstone of the inherent rightful
ness of human bondage. If Democrats cal
lind anything consOling in this record the.
are welcome to it. We would invite them
however, to becoming modesty in thrusting
into the faces of the American people. Their
are those who glory in their own shame, bu
we have never heard it recommended as
gracious or profitable performance.
HIGH WATER IN THE MIssOURI.--The Mis-
souri, river is reported to be higher than eve
before since lS40. despatch from Kansa
City represents the valley there as overhowe
so as to cover the tracks of the Missonr
Pacific, and Union Pacific Railroads to a suff
eient depth to extinguish the fires in the locomc