The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1879-07-31

then when the danger is passed of
turning them over for protection and
security to any local community, no
matter what may be its character for
lawlessness or its local and provincial
preiudices against all persons not to
the manor born? That would be a
restoration of the old view of States
rights, which gave the local commu-
mites the power to make the utterance
of the great truths of the Declaration
of Independence a penitentiary of
fense and to incarcerate in lonesome
dungeons Christian philanthropists
who gave crust of bread or glass of
water to the painting fugitive guilty of
no offense save his love of liberty.
TRUE sTATEMANsHIP.
l am citizen of the republic of
America, living within the territorial
limits of the State of Pennsylvania !;
and, so long as | obey the laws of both,
am entitled to protection for all my
rights as man and citizen wherever |
may go within the jurisdiction of the
Constitution and the courts of that
Republic | forfeit no guaranteed
rights of citizenship by crossing State
lines, nor is the Government absolved
from its duty and obligation to protect
me i'm all rights and privileges secured
or guaranteed by its laws, for by the
Constitution itself they are made the
supreme law of the land, anything in
! the Constitution or laws of Il State to
| the contrary Notwithstanding. | owe
no allegiance to any petty local COM
munity paramount to that which |
owe to the Government that guaran-
! tees to every State in the Union Re
| publican form of government and pro-
| lection against invasion and domestic
violence. The craftsmanship that re-
CARDS the local community in which a
man is born or in which he chances
to live as wiser and better than any
other, is akin to the self-righteousness
| that rejected the Saviour of mankind
| because he came out of Nazareth. In
our political system the doctrine that
local community is paramount tC
the nation is the child of American
slavery, and whatever injustice there
might be in other cases of visiting the
| iniuuities of the fathers upon the
children there can he none whatever
in this case, for it has been Pandora's
box of national ills. The threat OF
leading representatives of the Demo
cratic party to undo all that legislation
has enacted to save the Union in the
night of its peril, without the consent
of those who saved it, and the still
more violent and ineXcusable threat
to Withhold, so long as they have ma
iority in either branch of Congress
the necessary appropriations Of money
for the support of the Government o
the Union, unless their particular no
tions of States rights are respected, il
akin to the threat made nineteel
years ago to destroy the Union if it,
freemen, in the mode prescribed 10y
the Constitution, should elect Presi
dent of the United States not accepta
bic to them. The men who voweC
then, amid the clash of arms and tn,
din of battle, that whatever else nigh
perish it should not be the free in
stitutions of their fathers, in th,
same spirit VOW to-day, Hannibal-lik,
ut the altar of their country, by TIN
shades of half a million hero martyrs
sleeping in early graves; by the sigh
and tears of an equal number of wild
ows and orphans sitting at disconso
late tiresides; by the heroic sacrifice
of nation mourning its unreturnin:
brave, that those who wrought all thi
misery and woe shall not accomplish
in peace what they failed to accomplish
| in war.