The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1874-09-18
Cru Northern IT.
Paw Paw, MrcAreAH, SEPT IS 1914
ISSUES OF THE DAY.

ought not 10 be retained, or whether
the party in opposition has made for it.
self in or out of power, so excellent
record that it should again receive the
public confidence. All other issues are
but details of administration; questions
of policy to be settled within one or both
of organized party lines. Economic
theories are the work of theorists and
schools. Parties are modified and in.
fuenced, but not organized on them.
Those that are now marching to the
front are powerfully influencing both the
great parties, but they will divide mel
Their. The real issue is, which of these
two political organizations can be most
fairly trusted. 1t must be one or the
other. Colonel VIM. Grosvenor, of st.
Louis, by many regarded as the In
spring brain of the Liberal" move.
ment, as first indicated and before 1t
committed hari kari by the nomination
of Mr.. Greeley, said in substance year
ago that as an original Republican,
whenever he saw that the issue was one
between the general record of the two
old parties, be should be as before,
Republican in earnestness Of spirit.
Colonel Grosvonor only expressed what
the sincere men Of the so called Lib
eraln movement all feel. There is
nothing in any one of the pretensos at
reform put forth by the Democracy but
the most abiect and craving last Of pow
or. Their whole career IN opposition
presents a striking series of proof. Their
loyalty during the War was stinted by
their determination to pander to such
preiudices and policies as slavery had
created in the North, and nullified, even
in this penurious measure, by their de-
sire TO condone treason with political al
lance, and rebuild that unclean temple
of power the honest Indignation of the
Northern masses had overthrown. To
this end hostility to the war was made
a party shibboleth. Where most ram
pant it manifested tselfin the wickedest
of riots, the participants in which, reek-
ing with the fumes of their own thug
gerry, were addressed by the foremost
Democratic statesman the Governor of
great State-as My Friends 1t
was an unconscious satire on his political
associations. worthy of Juvenal himself.
To the end of rebuilding power through
open treason and secret sympathy the
party in opposition declared the war
failure on the very day that the guns of
Grant at Vicksburg and those of Meade
at Gettysburg proclaimed that the Con-
federate shell was broken by those de-
feats. While their Southern allies were
alike robbing the cradle and the grave"
to defend the fetid carcasses Of slavery
and disunion, the Northern branch of
their forces was giving aid and comfort
to the enemy by such declarations.
When the rebellion was defeated, it was
not the Democracy who led or followed
in the rejoicings The only response
they gave was to regird their loins to
hinder peaceful restoration and to i'm
pede the hoped for regeneration of the
South. Whatever hindered or embar-
raised Republican effort to this desil able
end sprung from Democratic opposition,
and where sincerely resisted it was by
arguments based upon old time Demo.
cratic theories and policies. So it has
been all through.
1t is Democracy that has hindered
Southern restoration and progress. The
opposition to emancipation came from
that source From that source was the
antagonism that hindered enfranchise-
ment. 1t was Democratic friendship
for sectional politics that formed the
Kuklux into horrible reality. II is
their continued hatred of national ideas
based upon the civic equality of all
that cardinal principle on which alone
the Republic can stand-that has 70.
mented the race issue aud organized the
Ubiquitous "White Leagues" The De.
stands only as an agency for
destruction. Its higest virtue is retro
spection. It's best methods are only
critical. 1t has nothing to offer, if in
power, except to undo. And the only
result so far achieved by it as the party
of opposition is to arouse race-hatreds
and fan into renewed flames the fires of
sectional strife, whenever evidence was
given of probable smouldering and dy.
ing out. 1t accepts no national issue.
1t knows nothing but the dead past. 1t
can only hinder, and then cry aloud in
scorn at the troubles which itself has
largely fomented. It's chief strategy is
to raise false issues, and the final pun.
ishment its managers always receive is
to see their best laid plans overthrow
by the spirit they raise but can not con-
troll. "They raise the whirwind" and
reap, but can not control, the storm.
Whatever may be the derelictions of
the party in power there can be but one
choice among all those who prefer the
rule of civil liberty to class and race op.
pressions and inequalities who desire a
rational rather than sectional spirit con-
trolling the Government; who want leg.
slation to be unmarried by cunningly
devised attempts at multiplying those or
iinances of freedom which are the result
4 -. -..,...Ioe ODD eoo.;c 100. ~ L