Clarksville chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 186?-1872, 1872-10-19
TIE CHRONICLE
GAINESVILLE, SAT. OCT. 10, 1872.

OLD parties are dead This cry is
heard from the throats of disorganiz
ers, everywhere, and funeral sermons
have been preached over empty graves
supposed to contain the veritable dead
bodies of defunct parties. But all
this outcry of demagogues reiterated
by their tools, is mere bosh, having no
other foundation than mistaken view
ofthe changeful political aspect ofpub-
lie opinion, and misunderstanding of
the relations of principles to parties.
1t is safe to assume that no party can
die, if its fundamental doctrines con-
stitute the basis Of free popular gov
ernment, honestly and economically
administered, with an eye to general
prosperity and the security of individ-
ual rights. Such party may be tenn
porarily disorganized by the miscon-
duct of those who compose it, but,
even if never reorganized on its origi-
nal system of tactics, its doctrines re-
main intact in all their vitality, and
being essential to the continued exis-
tence ofsound republican institutions,
they cannot die so long as that form Of
government survives.
If this be true, the Bourbon ele-
ment is struggling for the maintainance
of mere name, whilst the great body
of the Democrats, aided by the old
line Wings, are contending for the pre-
servation of those vital principles
which constitute the life of the gov
ernment, scorning to be turned aside
from patriotic duty by the senseless
charge of having abandoned a party,
or rather party name. That is the
Democratic, or Wing party-whatever
other name be given (which stands
upon the sound doctrines Of the old
Constitution, and he is the true Demo
crat, or whig, who follows up-in or
der to preserve--those doctrines into
whatever new combinations may be
deemed necessary to give them supre-
macy in the administration of the gov
ernment. The Radical party may die
because it embodies no doctrine that is
not inimical to the government as orig
inally constituted, and it must Gie, or
the government cannot live.
1t seems to be a common impression
that parties make principles, and there
fore claim them as the exclusive prop
erty of the party creating them. II
this were true, parties might well
die and their doctrines with them.-
On the contrary however, parties form
ed by principles around which ifsound,
the intelligence and integrity of the
country cOngregate, under whatever
name may be deemed significant of
such doctrines. Such a party cannot
die because its doctrines are its life
and they are eternal, even if totally ex
cluded from the government of which
they were the original basis. The
fundamental ideas of free government
have been so excluded, from the be-
ginning of the civil war, but that they
are not dead is apparent from their ac-
tive workings in the hearts of portion
Of the people, and even the Liberals,
though repudiaring the name, Demo-
crat are the earnest advocates of the
restoration of those doctrines to their
original pre- -eminence in the theory and
practice of the government. A Asquab-
BILE about names, at such a crisis, is
worse than pucrile, and to stigmatize
as dead, parties organized upon sound
elementary principles, is to proclaim
those principles dead merely because
organizations Of men have been dis
rupted by war and usurpations ofpow,
er by wicked men, have excluded those
principles from the administration OF
the government. Old parties arc not
dead. All that was perishable in theii
platforms, may, and ought to be, dead
but the principle of 20 are imper-
ishable, and it matters not to us, by
what combinations and under what
designation they may again be made
the foundation of free government.
----. -