The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-06-19
SUGGESTED PLANKs FOR A PLATFORM.

VIII erever the radicals have had full swing
in State legislation, and wherever a promi-
nent radical has had power to administer
martial law at discretion, there has always
cropped out, in some form, spirit of des-
potic and vexatious control over citizens with
respect to religious opinions and modes of
worship, or with respect to the innocent culti-
walton of social tastes and pleasures, habits
and traditions. To suppose the absolute
predominance of radicalism anywhere is to
suppose the enforcement there of a rigid
sumptuary code, and of a rigid standard of
religious orthodoxy, as well as of rigid test
of political loyalty. These suggestions are
not logically separable; and hence no en-
ightened friend of free opinion in either
politics or religion, or of individual indepen-
dence and social sincerity, grace, geniality
and brightness, can be in favor of continuing
the present radical preponderance in national
legislation, much less in favor of surrendering
into radical hands the elements of absolute
and universal power. To conceive otherwise
were to conceive a logical impossibility.
The classesEwhose rights are more particu-
larry menaced by the spirit, inseparable from
the radical regime, of despotic and intolerant
interference with modes of living, of recrea-
ton and of social enjoyment, and with re-
ligious usages and institutions, consist of
Germans, numbering three or four millions,
Catholics of all nations, but especially Irish
Catholics, numbering four and half millions,
and Jews numbering upwards of half mil
lion. The recent threat of the radical orator,
Rev. DR.. Breckenridge, to burn New York
city as a punishment for its containing so
many Democratic Catholics, the ferocious and
brutal persecution of non-conforming
ministers of the Gospel by the radical
State authorities in Missouri, and the
famous order of Gen. Grant denounc-
ing and prescribing Jews, without
exception, class who do not pretend to be
distinct from other people, save as a religious
body adhering to peculiar religious tenets,
requirements, rites and ceremonies, are suffi-
cient to indicate the treatment which any re-
igious community would have to expect from
unrestrained radical power, if federation of it
should not accord with the licentious designs
of that power. As to where and as to how
sorely the shoe Of sumptuary legislation, cut
after a genuine radical pattern, would pinch
the German foot, may be easily understood
by those who know something of German life
and character.
The Chicago platform contains nothing
whatever to destroy or to mitigate the signif-
90 h. ,vl.ao4snv,c Oh -
whatever to import that every odious and per-
nicious quality manifested in the green tree
would not be aggravated in the same tree
when old, and stout, and firmly rooted. And
this brings us to the suggestion of two or
three planks for the platform to be adopted
by the New York Democratic Convention.
One of these would protest against all legis-
lation, State or national, with reference to
individual and social liberties, under any pre-
tense, except for the purpose of protecting
the equal enjoyment of those liberties.
Another would meet the case of the radical
menace to religious freedom by making de-
claration substantially as follows:
That as firm and unwavering supporters
of the Constitution in all its sacred pledges,
We esteem as among the highest that which
secures to all men the free exercise of their
religious opinions; that We regard as mon
strous, and destructive alike of civil liberty
and social order the invasion of this inesti-
mable right by our political enemies, in de-
posing from their sacred Offices and placing
in durance the bishops and ministers of a holy
religion, and in denouncing as outlaws and