The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1868-07-04

There are but two parties in the country,
and have never been more One is the party
of the nation-the party whose ideas grow
from the great natural impulses of the people
toward freedom, progress, justice and right in
the broadcast and plainest sense. Called by
any name, this party has always been the same
in its principles and its purposes, which are
democratic in their very nature and essence.
Denominated wings in the revolution and
democrats in our subsequent history, the men
whose sympathies and instincts ally them to
this party are to-day the conservative masses
ofthe nation, who watch so-called party organ
izations only to see with which they may
wisely act to secure the welfare of the coun-
try. The other party is simply an instructive
aggregation of all the men who feel an an
tipathy to democratic ideas-who are in an
tagonism with the people merely because they
are the peohle-fellows prone to claim su-
periority in virtue of ad omineering disposition,
or respectability in virtue Of money, and who
cohere in the common purpose to substitute
their arrogant temper for the popular will, and
to govern the people on the assumption that
the people are never fit to govern themselves.
This is the true nature and division of parties
without regard to names for names are de-
lusive in the study Of parties, since the party
that opposes the people always endeavors to
palm itself upon them as the peoples party,
and will assume any name to accomplish this.
Indeed, the opposition elements adopt all
ruses to secure their triumph over democratic
ideas-sometimes opposing the people, some
times seeming to act with the people, but al
ways, whether on this side or on that keeping
in view the same end. In the years before the
war there was a striking illustration of this in
the conduct of the Southern fre-eaters and the
Northern political element that is now the soul
Of the radical faction. Though to all appear
ance the extreme elements of opposition be-
tween North and South, the country repeatedly
saw the instructive sympathy between these
factions, saw the strangest resemblances in the
thoughts and acts of either, and saw that
Massachusetts, and South Carolina, though they
called things by different names, were in fact
side by side, true sister States on all points of
principle. Their common ground of sympathy
was the same narrow view of our future that
put them In an attitude of the bitterest an
tagonism to popular purpose, and orators in
Boston denounced the nation and the constitu-
ton in the venomous style that was adopted
by the fre-eaters in Charleston Immediately
before the war and during its progress. Ami
mated by all the spirit of aristocracy, the
Southern leaders, though called democrats,
desired nothing so much as to trample demo-
cracy and every democratic idea under their
feet. They had already practically driven the
free laborer out from their States by the cult
walton of the slave, and were ready to push this
to such an extreme that there should not be
free laborer left. If they could not have
this right under the government of the United
States they would make a new government
under which they could have it, and this their
determination brought about the attempted
secession and the war. In every step of the
struggle the Northern radicals played directly
into their hands, their fast allies They kept
up the excitement-kept the national blood at
that fever heat of fury that made any act of
frenzy possible. In previous years New Eng
land, having the same notions as the Southern
States of this government, had proposed to
adopt the same remedy for an evil, and thus
she sympathized with secession and encOur-
aged the fire-eaters through all the radical
organs with the notion that the North would
assent to the destruction of the Union. Some
of the fiercer Of the radicals Of to-day were
then in the fre-eaters' party, and were the
hottest of all for extreme acts.
Our four years of war, therefore, were forced
upon the nation by those elements in either
party that are opposed to democratic princi
ples-the one section endeavoring to crush
out that guarantee of popular liberty the
sovereignty Of the States the other seeking
the same end by the extension of an aristo-
cratic system. Radical arrogance and self
suf.iciency played into the hands of the fire.
eaters, and the Hre-eaters, remembering the
obligation, are prepared to acknowledge Il and
pay in kind. This is their disposition as they
come to the Democratic Convention to
be held in this city to-day. They will
play into the hands Of the radicals as these did
INTO theirs, and will rather defeat the demo-
cracy and perpetuate radical rule than be
themselves pushed aside by the triumph of
democratic ideas. Even now they threaten to
secede from the Convention If they cannot have
their way, just as they tried to secede from
the Union when they could not have their way,
and they manifest the spirit that will break up
this Convention as the Charleston Convention
was broken up. These men are binder than
serpents slough to every political and social
fact Of the nations existence. They want to
go back to the Chicago platform and one of the
Chicago candidates, and pronounce the war
failure, and thrust that declaration down the
nations throat, intensifyfng its hatefulness by
presenting il everywhere with the same face