The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-10-24
VIRGINIA CENTRALISM versus DE
MOCRACY.

Inc snalloW-pated OStr1cn, which 1ancleS
itself concealed when it shuts its eyes and
sticks its head in the sand, does not prac-
tice greater self-delusion than the Con-
seryatives Of Virginia when they imagine
themselves inyincible in their absolutistic
notions, and their contempt for the liber-
ty Of the people. They make magnilo-
quent appeals to The old-lne Democracy
OF Virginia, as well as its old-time Whig-
gerry, to stand by the Conservative party,
as the true exponential factor of both the
old parties, while they endeavor to strike
down every principle of democracy, and
extinguish every national sentiment that
made the old Wing party the great nation
al party it once was.
Their idea of democracy is, that it
deliberately and systematically aban-
dons the man to his own unrepressed in
stincts and passions, and converts him Tor
should do SOY from a citizen to be governed
from an integral part Of the body
politic-nto "subject" to be ruled by an
oligarchical intelligence, such as is at all
times represented IN the Conservative party
of the state! With them, government is,
and Of necessity must be, power
exercised over subjects. And hence they
demand the abandonment of the township
system Of government, where every man
is true exponent of individual sovereignty,
and makes the more immediate laws by
which he is to be governed, without any
legislative restriction beyond what the con-
stitution Of the state, for good and most
obvious reasons, imposes. This form of
government is manifestly at war with the
principle of consolidation or centralism,
and the oligarchial party of the state is
bound to break it up, if it is in their
power to do so. The initial step has
been taken by them in the passage of
joint resolution Of the two houses of the
General Assembly to crush out the demo-
cratic principle of local self.government in
the towns, and create " magisterial dis
tricts." with outside magisterial power
over them.
IHC tuCJ use iafoI VI tuio
oligarcheal power reduces us to this terri.
BILE reductio ad absmolim If state can
exercise no authority over individuals ex-
cept by their own consent. then the au-
thority exercised is not that of the state,
but Of the individuals whose consent is the
necessary ingredient OF government. But
an individual who is required to submit to
no authority but his own, or, what is the
same thing, that which is self.derived, is
not at all ander government, and cannot
by an sort of logic be said to be governed.
Hence pure democracy, such as our
township system creates, is tantamount to
no government at all.
The fallacy of this argument will hardly
be recognized by those who deny that the
sovereignty Of the state resides in the peo-
pie; that they are its primary, deriyative,
and only legitimate source. If state is
absolute and sovereign in the sense in
which king is so, then the people are
subjects and not citizens; and our rulers,
who are temporarily invested with the au-
therity of the state, are the true and only
opponents of sovereignty, in their own
absolute personal right. This is to assert
the right or necessity Of some one man or
set of men, or some .oligarchical class or
caste, to rule over the people, which right
may be set down as incidental to, or abso-
lntely inherent in, the individual ruler him
self.
There is no difference then between the
absolutism of the Virginia autocracy, as
represented in the Conservative party, ex-
cept as it is under certain constitutional
limitations, and that of the Autocrat of |
Russia or the Bey of Algiers. The au- |
thority they exercise cannot be legtimately
affirmed of the people, but is necessarily
dependent upon the accident Of office, the
same as that Of birth under the completer
absolutisms of the Old World.
Absurd as this system of government
may be-and we can conceive of no greater
absurdity as applied to republic-it is