New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1874-06-27
THE WIRES AND HOW THEY WORKED
THEM

| Recently in San Francisco, in pulling
iEdown an old house, they found q mysterl
Gus complication Of wires and treadle'
which led under the carpets and along tn
4 ceiling. Thes furnished tie means o
4 communication by which the gamblers IL
several apartments gould ccYm1nicat'
with each other information essential t.
their common success against the, unsus
pecting victims of their accomplished ras
cality. To honest and inexperienced mer
this was inexplicable. Experts explained
that it was the net Of wire in which thu
gamblers entrapped their suckers. Il
was then seen that game proclaimed to
be son the square" was in fact but put
up device to swindle unsuspecting people
tout of their money" Ff or
! The civil war has done exactly the same
thing with great political party which
had taken in vain the~sacred name q
popular sovereignty, or Democracy. It
was found that wire had been laid from
o State Rights treadle in Charleston to a
Democratic button in Bangor, from tax
on imported trace chains at Harrisburg to
platform on which a freetrader har-
angued an audience of cotton planters
against the robberies Of a protective tariff,
and more astonishing than all others, q
wire connected the battery Of State
ruled by a select few, with a bulletin
board in Kansas wherein was inscribed
the Democratic doctrine of the popular
right of people to prescribe their own
institutions. This was derisively desig-
mated in the subsequent party schism
headed respectively by Douglas and Davis
as ''squatter sovereignty"
The war broke up and laid bare all these
wires, and displayed the State rights DEM
ocrats of Massa chusetts fighting for the
Union under General Butler; the State
rights Democracy of New York buying
substitutes by the thousand under the
State rights General Dix and putting
several thousand millions into the public
securities to carry on the war against their
States rights brethren, whom they last
met at the Charleston Democratic Con-
vention. At this they cast some ffty-odd
ballots for jefferson Davis and then re-
tired to speculate in public securities and
substitutes for "the defense Of the Union"
Democracy since these exposures has
come to mean general dissolution granted
in advance to commit any act of political
inconsistency with the professed creed of
the party. Thus, then, We see political
Jesuits and Jansenists tolerated in all the
latitude Of political dissent, provided at
the last moment they unite in the sacred
duty supporting the Democratic ticket
for the Presidency.
Coming down, then, to specimens of
gross inconsistency of Democratic prin-
ciples with Democratic practices, we take
the recent astounding evidence that the
Democracy of the South was always at
heart opposed to a government Of the
people, and preferred government by a
class who proclaimed to hold more prop
erty and more intelligence than others.
This exposure has been made in the
Democratic attacks on universal suffrage
and the Democratic claim that certain
classes alleged to be incompetent to enjoy
that right shall be excluded from its ex-
ercise.
What we are now about to state would
have been denounced in old times and
before the carpets which concealed these
frauds had been ripped up, as Federal
Wing lie" or some other sort of false
hood. It is plain that the limitation
upon popular government insisted on by
the Southern Democracy, is identical with
those advocated by the monarchists in
Europe. We have, heretofore, noted the
of the royalists and aristocrats
of England to grant the ballot to their
''unwashed" serfs. The estimate of the
personal ignorance and brutality Of the
white laborer, by his British masters, is
with that in regard to the eman-
cipated millions of the South, by their
Democratic enemies. We pass to France.
There we find in the National Assembly
precisely the same division of principle that
exists among ourselves. The Marquis de
Castillane discusses the law of suffrage
and the sovereignty Of the people. He is
a Royalist. His criticism on the election
law is, that to base government upon
alone is to deliver the govern
ment to demagogues. He predicates the
sovereignty of the nation upon the govern
ment of the nation. His distinction be-
tween the Republicans and Monarchists
are the same that we see here.
Says this nobleman:
Each system has its principle and its elec-
toral law. The Republican maintains the
law Of numbers. All the citizens are equal,
and one vote is. worth as much as another.
The Royalist places sovereignty, not in the
people, but in the government. These two
systems can not have the same electoral
law, each must have its own. 1t is not by
the little conditions of age or dOmicile that
society can be reformed. The bill limits
itself to rendering the registry of vaga-
bonds more difficult The danger does not
consist in this. 1t is not in the vote of
people without interest or home. 1t is, it
must be said, in the complete political in
competency of the masses, and in the exer-
else of sovereignty by them.
Then he asks:
The basis of universal suffrage-is it a
reality or lief do not hesitate to say it is
a lie.
Then he proceeds to state the true basis
of national sovereignty or monarchy.
1t is upon the representation Of property,