The Portland daily press., 1868-06-15
A Few Moral Reflections on she latest
nefa or,.I.

Experts in natural history have sometimes
become skeptics because they could not De-
ljeye the story of Jonah and the whale, hold
ing il clearly impossible that an animal so in
differently provided wi tn means of swallowing
should be capable of taking in whole man
Political skeptics will find it still more diff.
cult to believe that man of average size, like
the Chief Justice, is able with his limited facili-
ties for deglutition, to swallow the whole Dem
ocratic party and so incorporate its thousands
of members with his own existence as to cause
them to lose their identity as democrats ana
become one with himself. Yet this is what we
are asked to believe. The Chief Justice is
to concede nothing to the mountain. He will
not bulge an inch toward it, but wrapped in
his judicial robes awaits its coming with the
repose that becomes the ermine. So the
mountain, meek and lamblike, is to uproot it.
self and cast itself at his feet-and be swat
lowed. ... t..
1t is physical and moi al impossbility that
the political empires are attempting. The
Democrats will not become Chase, but Chase
will become ultimately Democratic. Yet the
most amusing efforts are made by the Demo
cratic thousands to cram themselves down the
Chief Justices unyielding esophagus. The
New York World hastily throws off all its old
pro-slavery and white mans government rags,
begins to spell negro with single 'g," and
makes the plunge with tolerable grace and
measurable success, Capt. Rynders, S. S. Cox
Mozart, Tammany, Voorhees, aud few other
extremists follow the gallant Miles O'Reily
without stopping to throw off their odd integ-
uments. John Morrissey makes the grand
leap, too, but presently reappears in the last
stages of strangulaton. The prize-fghtel
proves indigestible. The judicial stomach il
respectable" and has no secretion powerful
enough to digest so unwholesome a morsel
Provincial politicians follow, treading on each
others heels in the mad scramble to be first.
All this seems very wonderful to those who
do not know that it's all a trick, devised and
carried out by political Bltz's and Andersons
Would to heaven there were some sincerity
and conscience in the Democratic Chase
movement, for then all that has been fought
and prayed for by the Republican party would
be in the way of immediate consummation,
and from one end of the country to the other
there would be no human being who asked in
vain for Liberty, Fraternity and Equality.
The Declaration of Independence would be-
come the organic law, full of vitality and pow
err, instead of mere lfeless catalogue of alb
tract principles. But it is too much to expect
n this decade. There are too many evidences
that the whole project is a sham, resorted to
for the purpose of getting out Of most un-
comfortable political "fix." These evidences
are: t|H.
First, that there is not well authenticated
instance on record where Democrat has ever
voted for impartial suffrage. ..
Second, They have spoken and written al
ways and everywhere, and voted always and
everywhere against impartial suffrage. The
fate of liberal measures has always been deter
mined by the answer to the question "How
many Democrats are there?"
Third, the Southern Democrats whose views
on the subject Of negro suffrage are of the
most immediate and practical Importance do
not even for the purposes of political trickery
ostensi bly, abandon their hostility to equal
rights.
Fourth, the undiminished white mans gov
eminent zeal of the masses OF the fact that
the papers which advocate that giant heresy
are the most popular and successful.
Fifth, the negroes who have voted under
the reconstruction laws are still wandering
about in thousands without employment, the
the victims of the rage of their former mas
tiers.
In all this we are reasoning against our own
dearest wishes. We are convinced that there
is nothing but the basest hypocrisy and leger-
domain in this temporary bowling of Democ-
racy to the irresistible progress of events and
to the demands of truth and right. A singu-
lar confirmation of this unwelcome fact is to be
found in communication signed Progress
published yesterday in the Argus. Progress
admits the incontrovertible fact that in re-
public the ballot cannot rightly be taken from
those who once possess it. He first gives up
the whole great fight, but then he sees such
bugbears' in negro suffrage that he finally
takes back all he has conceded by proposing
that the negroes shall be represented lin Con.
gress and in the State legislatures by delegates
for whom they are to vote separately, and
this is all the suffrage and all the representa-
ton they are to have! He wouId take away
the equal right the negro now has to vote and
palm off upon him substitute which bear!
NOT tho sIiohtaat samhlanna To II