Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1873-09-25
A CREEDLESS PARTY.
From the Missouri Republican, (Dem.) Sept. 8.

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The Democratic party never realizes how
nearly dead it is till it comes to make plat
form. Platform-making is supposed to be a
formal, easy, matter of course work; but in
fact it calls for large amount of vitality.
To a live party, with an object before it, the
making of a platform is the easiest thing in
the world it.makes itself. But to half
dead party, with great history behind it,
nothing is so difficult The first prerequisite
| in platform building is that the party shall
know what kind of a platform it wants.
This essential condition the Democracy lacks.
1t does not know and cannot tell what it does
want-it cannot decide what it is for and
what it is against. A short time ago it i'm
agined it had at least one enduring anchorage
in the constitution, but it has well-nigh lost
even that; for, when it declares for the
"cOnstituton as it is" it finds that it is endor-
sing the whole constitutional or anti-constitu-
tional policy of the Republican party. That
party has put all it's leading acts into the con-
stitution and made them parts OF it. 1t has
amended the constitution to conform to it's
own platform. The constitution as it is is
very different thing from the constitution as
it was-a fact which the stubborn and irasci-
BILE Democracy, after refusing to admit, for
several years, is being forced to recognize at
last. The constitution as it is is the old con-
stitution with the Republican platform ap-
pended to it as an amendment; and when
the Democracy attempts to ''reayow its devo-
ton to the constitution" it finds that it is not
only proclaiming the platform of its oppo-
nents, but condemning its own. 1t is declar-
ing it's devotion to abolition, to negro suf-
frage, to the payment of the national debt,
and to nearly every other great doctrine and
measure which it once mortally opposed.
Even as constitutional party, then, the De-
mocracy has lost its yirility, since the very
milk which it draws from the constitution is
strained through hostile paps.
If there is one doctrine that the Democracy
imagined it knew all about, it is that of State
rights; but it is beginning to find out that it
does not know what it thinks even of that
familiar subject, and, what is more, it is
ceasing to talk about it. The Democracy
once held that the improvement of interior
rivers was above the constitutional authority
OF Congress-that the States might improve
the sections of rivers which ran through, or
past them, but Congress could not. In 1916
Mr.. Calhoun, who was the Democratic oracle
of his day, got sight of the Mississippi
river at Memphis, and, in Difference to the
claims of that majestic stream, modified the
Democratic doctrine on this subject so far as
to admit that Congress might properly assume
the work of improving river which ran
through or past three States, but could not
come below that limit. How changed our
opinions on this subject now! There is not
Democrat, in the Mississippi valley at least,
who does not think, not only that Congress
may improve every important navigable river,
but that it ought to do it. Nay, the Demo-
Gratis of Virginia and of the West think that
Congress ought to construct canal from the
Ohm n q 1onoo al iyo1x
through the two Virginias, and Hon. r. NJ
T. Hunter, an old states-rights Democrat of
the Calhoun school, publicly advocates the
measure. So, too, of the proposed canal
from the Tennessee river through Georgia to
the Savannah river, and the Fort St. Philip
canal in Louisiana; Western Democrats and
Southern Democrats earnestly demand that
Congress should construct them, without ever
caring that it would be frightful infringe
ment of the Democratic doctrine of state
rights of fifteen years ago.
Take the question OF bankss AS late as
1868, we had no banks, or bank notes pos
sessing authority outside the State in which
they were established and issued; we had
only wilderness of notes issued by different
banks in thirty odd States which were per-
petual fraud on the people. We had this
miserable monetary condition, because the |
Democracy held that Congress had no right |
to establish national banks, and the several |
States alone could furnish currency for the
country. This was the soundest sort of Dem
ocratic doctrine fifteen years ago; but what
Democrat holds it now?
Take the subjects of the tariff, taxing gov
ernment bonds, and specie payments-all |
practical questions of deep Importance; we
find the Democrats of the great State of Penn
sylvania in favor of q protective tariff, and
the Democrats of all other States in favor of |
we find the Democrats of the
debtor region, the West, strongly of the opin.
ion that the bonds of the government, yield
ing six per cent. gold interest to holders,
ought to be taxed as well IS the farmers land,
which yields only three per cent. per annum
while the Democrats of the creditor region,
the East, insist that they shall remain un-
taxed; and we find, again, the Democrats of
the creditor East demanding return to specie
payment, and the Democrats of the debtor
West hostile to every plan of resumption.
These diversities of opinion among modern
Democrats, and this antagonism of modern
Democracy to the Democracy of fifteen years
ago, account for the impossibility of con-
,tructing an effective and consistent Demo-
cratic platform. The task cannot be done;
he attempt to do it ends either in the Balti-
more folly of readopting Republican plat
FOrm, or in such miserable bOSh as has JUST
been put forth by the eunuch Democracy OF
Massachusetts,. lfait a II
The Democracy has lost the capacity to
ell what it wants; it can no longer per!orm
hat first essential function of an independent,
party-the construction OF
reed. n.'#A Asa 1-as h9sfJ s"1
WIN. HENRY CLIFFORD, son, of Judge Cliff
ord, of the United States Supreme Court,
8 the rising sun Of the Maine Democracy-
{ the Maine Democracy are entitled to- any {