Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1875-06-19
REPUBLICAN NOMINATION..
FOR GovERNoR.
seldom CONNOR
OF AUGUSTA.
THE NATIONAL iDEi.

OF Harper's Weekly. 1t is question OF
the highest importance, for the democracy
still maintain the doctrine on which
the right of secession was based.
and which if true leaves the union = mere
shadow, league to be dissolved at Will
BY any of the States. 1t was supposed
that the defeat of the rebels put an end to
the extreme State Rights theory advocated
by Calhoun, but we learn from the speech
by Senator Eaton of Connecticut last VIM
ter in Congress, and from the utterances
of other leading democrats aud many OF
the democratic papers, that the doctrine is
still one OF the cardinal principles of the
democracy.
In discussing the question Harpors
Weekly denies that to maintain the local
self government which attaches to States
and their subdivisions it is necessary that
the States shall be what is called sovereign.
Indeed such divisions cannot be sovereign,
for in all the great functions of govern
ment there is confessedly in every State
higher authority than its own. Twenty-fou'
of the thirty seven States were marked out
of territory which belonged to the United
States, and only admitted as States by the
voice of the general government. Or
course it is an absurdity to say that
States which were formed at the pleas
ure of the general government are su-
perior to the power which created them.
SAYS the article to which we have referred;
The fundamental principle OF local self
government, a principle which no intelIi-
gent American of any party denies, is to
be maintained not upon any visionary
theory Of State sovereignty, but upon
grounds of experience and expediency.
Ii the old colonial divisions and distinc-
tions had never existed, if State lines had
been unknown, it would have been the
highest wisdom to establish them when
we became independent, as, in fact, we
have established them in twenty-four of
the thirty-seven States. But to assume
that because of that establishment the i'm
migrant settler in Nevada or Colorado
owes an allegiance to the State authority,
created by the Union, superior to that
which he owes to the Union itself, is an
insanity which is not likely soon to recur,
but which has hitherto frightfully con-
vulsed the country. And that fatal heresy
was carefully cultivated, especially in the
Southern States, and became the plea and
the pretext of secession. Before the re-
bellion the doctrine had been declared by
the Federalists in New England. although
1t was hostile to their most cherished
dogma of strong and efficient general
government. But the assertion there was
transitory, and it acquired little hold. The
land of the town-meeting, which knew
the immense value Of local government,
knew by the same instinct which clung to
that, the indispensability of the national
supremacy. 1t never mistook friga!e
for feet
The part of the country in which the
necessary supremacy of the nation has
been most fully acknowledged is that in
which the true rights of the State have
been most carefully conceded. Thus
in the great debate upon slavery the
Slave States held that the prohibition
to take their slaves in any State, except
under constitutional guarantees, which
was an extension Of the local law of
slavery to every Free State, was wrong
for which they might seek remedy by
dissolving the Union but the Free States.
while holding slavery to be a curse to hui
man society and peril to the Union, re-
spected the right of every State to its own
local and municipal law upon the subject.
Again, the Slave States, the hot houses of
State sovereignty, declared that they
would impose their Safe laws upon the
common territory of the United States or
destroy the Union, while the Free States
simply maintained that the common will
must regulate the common domain. The
soundest political philosophy and the
truest view Of the character of the Amer
lean Union have been those of that part of
the country, which resisted the practical
effort TO maintain State sovereignty by the
destruction of the Union. This must be
evident to intelligent men in the Slave
States, and they will naturally accept the
corollary, that those who have most truly
understood the real nature of the govern
ment are those who should administer it,"
The Kennebec Journal in its usual courteous
manner, denies the truth Of that portion of the
Argus report of its State convention which states
the manner in which the prohibition plank came
TO be Iut in, and says il does it the authority
of Major Shorey. We have the authority of qui
as credible temperance man Major Shorey
for the entire truthfuness of the idea conveyed by
the report, and further, that had not that plank
been put in, the prohbtionists POSSIBLY Major
Shorey excepted, if he claims to be prohibition
ist) would have bolted the nomination, So much
for that We simply told the truh,-Laste,a Ar-
gus
The Argus stated in its report of the
convention that 'Sborey OF Bridgton, and