The Portland daily press., 1871-07-25
The Failure of the New Departure.

The Failure Of the New Departure.
From Harper's Weekly.
The new departure of political party can
hardly be called successful if the whole party
does not depart. A new departure is other
wise mere schism and such the movement
of Mr.. Vallandgham and his friends must
now be considered. 1t has divided the patty
instead Of uniting it. 1t has been nowere,
no. even in Ohio, where it was proposed, re
ceived with unamnty and enthusiasm, while
it has ELECTED the most positive protests from
able leaders. At the Tammany performance
it was, indeed, urged by Mr.. John Quincy
Adams, who is, however, chartered libertlne
in the party which he has recently Joined;
and he is the same gay Mentor who, in one
of his many epistles to the brethren, advised
his new love, the Democratic party, to begin
by being democratic, which was very much
as if he had advised the Neponset River to
flow the other way. The Democratic party
has never been democratic. 1t used to call
itself the poor mans party and the working
many party when it had its cruel heel plant
ed upon the hearts of millions of poor work
ing-men, to whom it denied even right to
their manhood and to common humanity.
And even now the attempt to take new de-
parture by asserting the equal rights of men
under the Constitution has produced serious
differences in the party.
The difficulty is one that we have more
than once ventured to suggest. A party is
not measured by its professions merely, but by
the probabilities of its performance arising
from various considerations. If in the midst
of the war, if at Chicago in 1864, instead of
crying out for surrender to the rebellion, the
Democratic party had pronounced for vigo-
rous prosecution of the war, tie Re
publican party would have replied, every
ell. D,,%
had retorted that, having declared for the
war, it ought to have control of the govern
ment, even Sherman and his men lost in
Georgia would have heard the suhot of deris-
ion that would have rung through the loyal
land. While the leadership and general com
position OF party remain unchanged, the
profession of different purpose is not very
persuasive. What is the significance of ad-
vice to party to begin by being democratic?
Plainly that 1T is not democratic now. And
when new departure is demanded, what is
it but confession that the old position is I'M
tenable? When, therefore. we push the inqui-
ry to the end, we fnd that those who have
always sustained slavery and all the infamies
thai sprang from it, who wished to retain in
reconstruction as much of the root of civil
hate as possible, who wished to forbid equal
| suffrage and to perpetuate class privilege,
who confusedly and agresssively asserted
| State sovereignty against national supremacy,
who pallated and justified the rebellion, and
derided and perplexed the government OF the
Union, have at last decided that they can
not recover powerbysuch cries and positions,
and hope to acquire public confidence by de-
parting from them.
Now as these are really the people, with the
same principles, they have fonud an insuper-
| APPLE difficulty: they can not persuade them
selves, and they can not persuade the coun
| try. A-p'atform, as these gentlemen all very
well know, is usually considered to re a tub
to the whale. Its object is to amuse, and pos
sibly to deceive. 1t must say neither too
much nor too little. 1t must not disappcint
the advance nor dismay the rear. And,
whatever the platform says, it derives all its
significance from those who stand behind it,.
/ it is like the word OF man. Ii his charac.
ter confirms what he says, it is enough. But
it is also enough if itdoes not. The Demo-
cratic surrender platform at ChicogO in 1864
was an exact expression of the party senti-
ment. The country knew that the party
| wished to surrender. The party character
sustained the platform. But the same char
| acter does not sustain, in the same sense, the
| new departure platform. The utmost that it
conveys lisa shrug and grimace that "we cant
help ourselves, and so we acquiesee." What
reason was there, if Mr.. Vallandigham had
of Ohio upon his own platform, for any man
| who voted against him during the war to
vote for him now? His position was not
one OF conviction, but of cOmpulsion. And
what was true of him is true of the attempted
new attitude of his party. The question al
ways remains, Why trust the men who were
1strusted yesterday because they decla.e to :
day that they will contend no longer? The
change itself shows them to be less trust
worthy.
The Democratic party, vainly trying to
rally itself upon new line, hopes to contest
the election OF 1872 upon the question of cen
tralization. But let any sensible man ask
himself this very practical question. SIS ii
safer to trust the republican party, even with
this centralzing tendancy, or the Democratic
party, with its State sovereignty dogmas p
And beyond and above all this, the question
which honest people all over the land will
ask themselves is, whether it is safe to aban-
don party whose traditional policy is liber-
ty, union, and fair play, which represents the
political movement of the intelligence and
moral character and purpose of the country,
which has the American conscience behind
| its professions, and to favor party whose ira
ditional policy is slavery and inequality, and
| which represents the ignorance, the preju
| dice, and the hostility to the Union that still
exist in the country? An election is not a
contest OF fine professions. 1t is choice be-
tween what are believed to be convictions
and they are sought and found not in the
rhetoric of the Convention, but in the career
of the party.
No sensible Republican asks vote for his
party upon the ground that it has been uni
formly wise, that all its measures have been
unexceptionable, or that all its conspicuous
members have inspired respect or confidence.
But he does ask it upon the ground that that
party contains the great mass OF loyal citizens
who honestly believe in equal rights and
would honorably maintain them, with the
great multitude of intelligent and industrious
people whose good sense assures them that
those who tried to destroy the government
ten years ago are not those who should con-
troll it now. And this is a multitude and a
conviction which are not likely to be disturb
ed by the loudest vociferation of new policies
and principles and departures upon the part
of their opponents.