Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1878-12-03

party more certainly than having nc
legislative end in view-that is, having
no policy capable of being embodied in
legislation, or promoted by legislation.
A party cannot live by preaching or hir-
ing preachers; it lives by making and
executing laws, or by seeking the power
OF making laws which it is able to de-
scribe in advance. The Republican par
ty has afforded an excellent illustration
OF this In its own history. AS soon as
the reconstructing of the South was
done, and it could make no more prom
lses. and had to commend itself to pop
ular support simply by s'pointing with
PRIDE" it began to decline steadily and
lose its hold on the Government It has
owed Its recent partial recovery to its
again offering to undertake and carry
out q definable policy in legislation. 1t
Will again go to pieces if, after the cur
rency question is settled, it goes back to
the work of denunciation. Solidity
could only be offered as policy in case
the South were governed or governable
as conquered province, and the ques-
ton before the public was whether mill
tary rule should be maintained or how
it should be exercised. AS the South is,
solidlty against it might be a proper OBJ
Ject for sect or a proper theme for de-
batting club, but there is nothing in it by
which political party can live.
5. The only way within our reach of
securing people in the condition of the
negroes at the South in the free exercise
of the franchise THAT is, without an
abandonment of our present form of
Government and the acknowledgment
that State majorities are not really
sovereign is to make it an object with
the whites to protect them in it, by CIV
ing the whites an opportunity to divide
into two political parties. AS soon as
this happens each party will draw por-
ton of the negro vote to itself, and will
see that its negro voters. are protected at
the polls. In other words, ''shot- guns"
will then be met by "shot-guns rifle
clubs which go out to intimidate will be
met by other rifie-clubs as brave or as
feroclous as they. Ballot-stuffing will
be repressed by the same methods which
are found effectual here. The negro will
be assailed by persuasion from each
side, and one side at least will have re-
lations with the North which will make
it seek and welcome northern speakers
and opinions. The division cannot be
brought about suddenly; nor will it be
ohO ASouAe VI SIdt1LuU0, LILO Walt OI
which at the South furnishes the subject
of some very amusing articles in Re-
publican papers, whose complaints
sound very much like complaints of a
man who has been pummelling another
severely because the rascal did not thank
him when he let him go. 1t will come
from the growth of new questions from
the revival of trade and industry from
the cessation of intestine denunciation,
and from honest endeavors on the part
of northern politicians to act with south.
erners on National questions without
examining too closely into the condition
of their hearts. 1t can never come as
long as the southern whites are kept
constantly on the alert to prevent re-
storation of negro government by the
of party at the North which
makes the vote it ought to have at the
South out of the census returns, and
treats every negro who votes the Demo
cratic ticket as necessarily the victim of
violence. Progress by this process will |
doubtless be slow, but Republicans have
enough experience of the difficulties of
among men of their own |
race at the North to afford an example |
of great patience towards a community |
whose burdens they do not share, and |
which is still heaving with the throes of
q revolution which has gone deeper |
down than any other recorded in his
tory.