New-York tribune., 1868-07-04
KEEpJyG THE DAY

There have been men and women who, re-
iecting as fable the whole record of historical
Christianity, have held general meetings for
the vndicatiOn and the prOmulgatidn of their
incredulity; but we have never heard of any
Infidel Convention which had the audacity to
appropriate to its own skeptical uses the hal
lowed birthday of Our Savior We offer this
illustration of the absurdity of Democratic
National Convention on the Fourth of July in
no irreveTent spirit; it will occur undoubtedly
to many serious minds, and it naturally springs
from the self-suggesting analogy between re-
ligiOus and political apostasy. It's extraOrdi-
nary misnOmer, under which it doggedly
maintains the most aristOcratic Of notions while
it is theoretically devoted to the cause of uni
versal freedom, having become a device too
stale to deceive even babes and sucklings, the
Democratic party has TesOrted to the ingenious
expedient of meeting upon the present ami
versary, and fancying that windy professions
of patriotism will not be too severely criticised
upon day sacred to Liberty 1t will, within
few hours, resolve that all men are equal,
and that White Men are superior to Blacks
are naturally, socially, and politically superior
and should have that superiority recognized by
fundamental law. This trifing inconsistency
will daunt nobody in the Convention, from its
President to its DOOrkeeper. 1t will not retard
the torrent of elOquence from the platform by
never so slight stammering; it will prove no
hinderance to the flux of resolutions; it
will, with more or less ingenuity, be
avoided by the rhetoricians of the
hour; and those who are eager to undertake
the conduct of great national affairs will de-
mOnstrate their competency by flippant use
of specious phrases and out-wOrn generaliza-
tions. There has always been falsehood enough
God knows, in politics, but there never has
been so comprehensive and contemplate q
fasehOod as the meeting this morning implies.
1t is not our fault if the selection for such
purposes of venerable day cOmpels us to
characterize inconsistency and insincerity with
out any polite circumlocutiOn. We have no
quarrel with honest opinions If Mr.. Horatio
Seymour, or any other aristocratic " Democrat" !"
really believes that all men are NOT born free
and equal if Mr.. Brooks, or any other olgarch,
sincerely thinks that liberty is NOT the inaenable
right of all, if Mr. Pendleton, or any other
champion of the nobility of complexion, honestly
| holds, in spite of his Bible that God has NOT
made all men of one blood, let the precious
triumvirate trumpet its theories to all the world,
and bravely exhibit to the Republic the con-
clusions which it has painfully and philosophi-
cally arrived at, the facts upon which it stands,
and the processes by which it has detected the
errors of Thomas Jeffersonl But, in the name
of the illustriOus dead, we protest against
making them the helpless sponsors of fallacies
which living they exposed, and of wrongs which,
| while in the flesh, they detested. If the
Democracy" wish to claim particular
property in Mr.. Jefferson, they must prove
their title otherwise than by voiding
their rheum upon the mature opinions