The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-17
SYSTEMATIC USE OF THE REGULAR
ARMY TO INFLUENCE ELECTIONS.
n AZ IEnrId

ARMY TO INFLUENCE ELECTIONS.
F,On the NJ Y. Herld
1he Republican party has syste natized the
employment of our regular army, or, in
European phrase, our standing army, to regu-
late and influence elections. II there be
honor in the act, the honor has been faith
fully earned; if there be dishonor, that party
must, in like manner, bear the stigma And
il makes no difference in the responsibility
whether officers and soldiers, who have made
military pursuits profession or occupation,
and thus to that extent isolated themselves
from the general mass of citizens,
are employed either by virtue of
Congressional legislation covering
special state Of facts, or of assumed exeou-
tive prerogative under the Constitution, to
control the exercise of political power by the
people In either case it is the Republican
party, as a party, which has, in violation of
the methods and naxims of civil liberty, or
ganized, developed, mstured, and put into
practical operation the idea of Federal inter
ference by q stanSsng army in the exercise of
the elective franchise by the people of the seve-
raj States. Now that the emotions stirred by
our recent election have measurably subsided,
there is not an intelligent and self-respecting
citizen in this State no matter what his po-
litical creed, who will deny that the evidence
of armed Federal intervention, North, South,
East and West. is sufficient to warrant the
assertion which we make of o systematic and
digested plan. 1t will be borne in mind that
the use so popular with the Republican party
is not of the militia of the respective States
they who are citizens in thought, habit,
interest, and daily assooiation-but of the
standing army of the nation; force
recruited, organized, paid, aud set apart in
garrison and camp for the business of war
| and death-death, not to our own people,
but, according to the primitive idea of its
! formation, of foreign invader and aggressor
! The people of the several States, North as
we'll as South, pay their proportion of
| Federal taxation to maintain the Military
| Academy at West Point, for example, not for
the purpose of educating officers to control
the working of the civil institutions of the
different members of the great republic, but
chiefly to ward off and keep at bay an out
side foe To that end the rank and file
of the regular army are supported by
popular taxation. To man, protect, and
preserve, to occupy and possess forts, and
fortresses is, in time of peace, the primary
and main business of standing army.
Our whole system of liberties reposes on the
| idea that civil affairs are to be administered
| by cipibdnS, designated and commissioned
for that purpose by the proper civil authority
of the land. Great emergencies clearly
rising to the proportion of insurrection or
rebellion, palpably beyond the control of the
civil arm may constitute an exception; but
citizen militia of the States which is to be
first called upon, and not the standing army.
The device of throwing regular troops as dis
tinguished from the militia, mercenaries
instead of volunteers, into locality SO as to
be at hand to be employed as part of the
posse cOm,jtatus, and yet subject to the direc-
tion of the military authority, is, in its syste-
matte application, a measure born, we repeat
out of the loins of the Republican party Is
this birth thing of honor, or of dishonor? /?
Let us look to the great fountain-head of
civil liberty, personal liberty, and political
liberty-the English revolution of 16SS-and
see what lessons and maxims we find there to
guide us in this crisis! MelttuS petere .fontes
gudn1 SectdrS ri0ulOS. Then it was that the
English people, and as their inheritors,
obtained the full benefit of those rights and
liberties for which good mon toiled, suffered,
and passed to their great reward. The Inca
ments of that struggle are impressed upon
our Federal Constitution in lines so deep that
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and their
co-workers fondly hoped they would endure
and control forever in the framing of our
laws, the conduct of our executive and the
administration of justice by our judicial
tribunals
The history OF England daring the last two
hundred years is filled with other similar and
most convincing examples of the vigilance
with which thoughtful and patriotic men in
that birth-land of civil and religious liberty
have hemmed in the military power and con-
fined it within its legitimate limits. We
could quote pages to the same effect from
parliamentary enactments royal orders, judg-
ments of the Privy Council, and opinions of
crown lawyers.
Does any student of English constitutional
and parliamentary history suppose that either
the Duke of Wellington or Lord Palmerston
would in their day, upon any pretext, have
sanctioned or tolerated such military domina
ton as thete orders disclose over the free
exercise of the rights Of British voter? At
an election in London for members of Par
lament, would the newspaper press of thai
city have upheld for an hour a ministry
employing the standing army as the
Republican party has done? Coald
British magistrate be found whl
would consent to administer justice Gas die
! court) between the crown and the subject il
4 q warehouse loft, surrounded by military Off
GERS instructed not to obey implicitly tn,
3 civil magistrates in preserving the public
: peace, but to consider the purposes which
I the crown had ia view? France, in the wors
{ days of the Second Empire, might hav,
afforded a spectacle like that presented il
a this city on the Sth instant, but not EuglanC
{ for the last POO years. Indeed we doub
1 if Prussia-the most despotic, aristocratic
; and military power of civilized Europe
v would have permitted such military inter
/ ference with the elective franchise. Coun
Bismarck could refuse to permit any election
, at all, as he did in respect to the peopl,
of SchlesWig- Holstein. in violation of solemn
treaty stipulations but if the electors wer
! once allowed to vote, we dare predict h
/ would have sanctioned no such military do
akion In EurOnean countriaS whar