Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1877-07-21

TO see TO IL InaJ the TASK OF restoring
constitutional government and re-
forming our administrative system
shall no longer be placed in the
hands of men who streneOusly resist
ed those ameliorations so long as re-
sistance was possible, who looked
upon them, as Satan looks upon the
Sun,
ITO tell him how he hates his BEAMS"
but that men shall complete the
work who have all along been de-
manding it, who have been strug-
Cling for it against crushing odds
and amid constant defeat, and os-
tracism from power for its sake. In
other words, it will then be the du-
ty of the Democratic party to abol-
ish the present scandalous condition
of political affairs, in which an adj
ministration is carrying on the gov
ernment on the principles Of the
party which opposed it, relying for
support upon its antagonists and
dreading defeat on the part of its
cOnfederates.
Anything more chimerical can
scarcely be conceived than to sup
pose that the men who for the last
thirteen years have been fighting
the Democratic battles can now for
sooth be suddenly divided into two
opposing factions because some of
them twenty years ago were called
Wings and some Democrats.
The issues which then separated
them have not only passed away,
but their traces have been Obliterated
by other issues which have unit
ed them and are of intellectually
deeper moment than those others
ever were. What weret the old ones g?
A national bank, a protective tariff,
and internal Improvements. And
who suppOses that national bank
is going to be revived in the present
day? AS for internal improvements,
the only question now agitated I'M
der that head is whether the South
shall have Disadvantages in the way
of railway communication with the
Pacific coast now enjoyed by the
North, and on that point the whole
North, Republican and Democratic,
is opposed to us. What more? The
Tariff. Even Mr.. Hayes himself
seems to be awakening to the truth
that the present tariff which is pro-
hibitOry rather than protective, is
the chief incubus which is now
crushing down our commercial pros
perity.
They are dead issues all, and to
divide now prosperous party on
them or to build a new one on them
is no more practicable than to renew
the struggles of the Roman patric-
ians and plebeians, or the Wars of
! the Roses. New issues, new princi-
piles, new political combinations are
not originated by old party hacks
dreaming over the past, but by men
of the present, still more by men
with a keen eye for the future and
and the man who should go among
the rising politicians, the coming
men of this day, and tell them to
withdraw from all political associates
who had not been Wings in the days
of Jackson and Tyler-we have
scarcely patience to finish the sent
ence-such a man would be careful
ly bottled up as a curiosity fit only
for a museum of antiquities. Imag-
inc Mr.. Hayes, or say his agent for
Tennessee, Mr.. Key, approaching
Col. House and warning him against
any political association with Gen.
Quarles because he was a Democrat
before the war; then imagine the
Colonel going over the list of the
men with whom he has been acting
the last twelve years and carefully
separating the goats from the sheep,
the Democrats from the Wings, and
saying to the former depart from
me workers of iniquity" and then
cleaving only to the Iatter-the sup
position is sOabsurd that it need only
be stated to be laughed out of court.
Mr.. Lamar, of Mississippi, has
been put forward as a probable lead
er of old line Wings and has been
petted and flattered a good deal by
the Stanley Mathewsclique; but Mr..
Lamar is not fool; ifnot a profound
statesman, he is at least a far-seeing
politician, and Lamar well knows
what treatment he would meet with
at home if he were to go to such a
man as Judge Clayton, for instance,
and say: Clayton, you were a
Democrat before the war, 1 reckon
you and | will have to be on differ
ent sides hereafter" and so in the
same manner weed out Chalmers
and other Democrats, old school and
new schOOl-hOw long would it be
before he was weeded out himself?
He is much too shrewd to make the
experiment even if he were dis
posed to do so.
To men who really know the
South it scenes a superfiuOus folly
to say anything serious to this pur-
pose, but there are journals in the
North which, if they are not misled
themselves, are at least egregiously
misleading others to believe that the
Democratic party is dispersed and
disbanded and that the South is pre-
pairing for a millennium which is
even now fondly awaiting a resur-
rectiOn of old line Wings to rule
over it; and such papers may have
some readers here South. If any
such there be within reach of our
discourse, we bid them be well as
sured that Southern Democrats are
willing to receive any instalment of
Democratic policy even from those
who have been till now its bitter
antagonists; but that their choice for
agents to carry out Democratic