The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-09-03

Ass-.~.u-.-z.z~-A s~.@.
sentally an.autocreey it was neither re-
publican nor democratic. The people
hardly had the right to choose their own
hog-reoyes and fence-viewers everything
was done through the agency of the central
autocracy-the General Assembly. They
treated power as self-derived, and not as
emanating from the people, and almost the
entire machinery of state government was
moved in obedience to this principle.
1t is true that the Bill of Rights con-
tanned the "glittering generality" that all
men were born free and equal, and had
certain inalienable rights, among which
were the enjoyment of life, liberty and
property but the constitution virtually
ignored the grand central idea Of local self
government, upon which all true Democra-
cies rest. Instead of being a limitation
upon po,oers like the constitution of all
republican states, it was rather an npes-
tire of popers, clothing the central authori-
ty with an unlimited sway over the people,
who were absurdly called citizens" in the
instrument of investiture, instead of sub
jects as they really were. And we are not
surprised that this form Of government OBJ
tanned so long in Virginia. In 1776 the
people Of the State dispensed with the
kingly office, but deemed the autocratic
powers of their sovereign as necessary to
. ha md
quently lodged them in the hands of the
General Assembly. The autonomc char
acter of the government remained the same
its autonomy merely changing hands
while the power to be exercised was equal
ly self-derived in the one case as in the
other. This was the character of the gov
eminent of Virginia until the democratic
principle of life was infused into it by the
constitution of 1860.
And yet, in the face of these facts and
this advance in true Democracy in Virginia,
Mr.. Tyler speaks of "the pure old Demo-
cratic principles" of the past as utterly
crushed out and obliterated by the events
of the war. He despairingly says:
There are no real States, nor State Sovereignty
nor State Rights any more. Certain Territorial
divisions of the country are called States, but
they are actually Provincial municipalities. We
no longer live as q free citizens in a voluntary
Union of free Commemorative, but in socalled
Union, pinned together by bayonets " If any
man says there is now a freeman in the United
States after the old definition of the fathers de-
ceives himself, or seeks TO deceive others. It is
useless to indulge in such seif-deception Noble
freedom, born of the spirit of the old Constitu-
ton and Union and so long, faithfully and warm
ly cherished by the old Democracy, is gone. Its
blood cries out from the ground aE4
Now we must say to Mr.. Robert Tyler
that if there is any blood that ''cries out
from the ground" it is that which was
wickedly wasted in the effort to break up
and destroy the voluntary Union Of free
Commonwealth" into which his fathers
and our fathers solemnly entered by COM
pact, and which, when ratified by three
fourths Of the states, could not be annulled
except by the same soemnites that entered
into its original ratification. Mr.. Tyler
says that if he had the past to live over he
should do precisely in the future as he has
done in the past. We doubt this little /;
at all events, with his secession experience
as light Of the past, he would hardly ven
ture on another attempt to annul the "sol-
emn compact" entered into by his fathers,
by the action of less than one-third of the
states, when the first principles governing
compacts requires the same authority to
annul as to ratify.
But let us assure Mr.. Tyler that our gov
eminent has undergone no such hideous
change as he too absurdly imagnes. If
he will turn to the seventeenth resolution
in the Philadelphia platform, he will find
the following sound Democratic plank,
which is worth dozen such meaningless
generalities as are contained in the Cincin-
matt "springc to catch woodcockso: "The
Republican party propose to respect the
rights reserved by the people to themselves
as carefully as the powers delegated by
them to the State and to the Federal govern
ment. 1t disapproves of the resort to un-
constitutional laws for the purpose Of re-
moving evils by interference with rights not
surrendered by the people to either the
State or national government"
Here is the true principle of " State
rights the term don't frighten Virginia
Republicans as it was understood by the
fathers of the Republic" The people
are here recognized as the source of soy
ereign power, not only as delegated to the
States but to the Federal government. If
such men as Mr.. Robert Tyler propose to
forget the fundamental principles Of liberty
and self-government which were struck out
by the collision of flint and steel in the
Revolution, it is certain that they will not
be forgotten by the men who determined in
1851 to save the great inheritance of 177G.
! EX-SENATOR DooLITTLE has at last