Gold Hill daily news. [volume] (Gold Hill, N.T. [Nev.]) 1863-1882, 1868-06-22
PLATFORMS AND PRAoTI-
CALITIES,

The leading article in the Entsrprise
of Saturday last opened with the fol-
lowing very remarkable language /:
:" Without abating one jot or title of
the ~reprobation which such infamy as
Chase's merits, we do not hesitate to
declare that should so improbable a
thing occur as the transformation of the
Democratic party into the party Of pro-
gress, we should vastly prefer a national
victory Of tho new Democracy under
the lead Of a Butler, to a Republican
success under any one who should feel
himself bound by the Chicago platform
to oppose universal suffrage" That
which the Enterprise admits to DO i'm
probable-"t the transformation Of the
Democratic party into the party of pro-
gress"-we consider utterly impossible
except in the contingency Of a complete
transpositiou Of the constituent ele-
ments Of the two great parties that now
divide the country. The masses Of the
Republican party would require to be-
come Democrats and rice rersa, before
Democracy and progress could properly
be regarded as congruous terms. The
writer Of the Enterprise article has taken
q very superficial and incomprehensive
view Of American politics, il he sup
poses that the leadership of any one
man, or the p~hrascology Of any political
platform, will mould or control ele-
ments essentially retrogressive into in
struments of progress.
1.-THE devil got sick,
And the devil a monk would be;
The devil got well,
And the devil a monk was he"
And so it is with the dovilish, an
archie, revolutionary, illiberal thing
called Democracy. 1t /. just now very
sick and may seduce SON fallen angel
Of light to its leadership and decorate
the portals of its political Hsdes with
the Ten Commandments, Lords prayer
and Christ's Sermon on the Mount, but
whenever they get well aud recover
their ascendancy Beelzebub will resume
his leadership and hell will reveal itself
beyond the deSeitful f~estoonry of the
portals. A shrewd and profound poll
tician, formerly Of California but now
Of this State-a politician in the broad
est and best Specification Of the term
is the author Of q sound and safe polit-
ical maxim. He says that though he
should have been absent from the Uni
ted States for half a century, and should
know absolutely nothing Of the plat
forms and principles by which parties
protested to be governed, he would feel
perfectly free and entirely safe to mako
his selection and declare his adhesion
to one and his opposition to the other,
merely on a view Of the members Of
each. His conclusion is intelligent as
we'll as safe. The transformation Of o
sou's ear into a neat and durable silk
purse is not only improbable but i'm
possible, but the attempt to do so would
be quite as practicable as it is to essay
the construction of a "party Of prog
ress" out Of the ignorant, illitorate,
illiberal and brutal elements that con-
stitute the bulk of the Democratic party.
And it were just Us impossible for the
Chicago or any other platform to :'biud"
the intellige nt, liberal, thinking and
progressive membership Of the Repub-
licau party. The Chicago platform
represents all that the Convention con-
sidered the party, as a party, willing to
pledge itself for at the present, but it
neither binds nor attempts to bind indi-
vidual members in the expression Of
broader and moro advanced views. Men
and presses of the most advanced ideas
may advocate them without hindrauce
in the party, with the assurance that
only by convincing and converting the
membership Of that party can those
ideas ever triumph. To labor for the
success of the Republican party and
strive to mould it to the advocacy Of
most progressive measures, is far more
sensible and practicable than to elothe
the devil Of modern Democracy in cowl
and stole and seek to endow it with
priestly functions.