The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1879-05-07

Daniel webster, many years since, coMpre-
hended the value of prompt action when
the liberties Of the people were In danger,
and with the wealth Of his logic and elo-
quence, placed proper estimate upon adj
herring to principle when he said:
Every encroachment, great or small, is i'm
portant enough to awaken the attention of
those who are entrusted with the preservation
of a constitutional Government. We are not
to wait till great public mischlefs come, till
the Government is overthrow, or liberty it
self put into extreme jeopardy. We should
not be worthy sons of our fathers were we SO
to regard great questions affecting the general
freedom. Those fathers accomplished the rev.
olution on a strict question of principle. The
Parliament of Great Britain asserted q right
to tax the colonies in all cases whatsoever;
and 1t was precisely on this question that they
made the revolution turn. The amount of tax
alton was trifiing, but the claim itself was in
consistent with liberty. and that was in their
eyes enough. 1t was against the recital of an
act of Parliament, rather than against any
suffering under its enactments, that they took
against a preamble. They fought
seven years against a declaration. They
poured out their treasures and blood like
water, In a contest against an assertion which
those less sagacious and not so well schooled
in the principles Of civil liberty, would have
regarded as barren phraseology or mere parade
of words. They saw in the claim of the
British Parliament a sentinel principle of
mischief, the germ of unjust power; they de-
tected it, dragged it forth from underneath It's
p ausible DISCUSSES, struck at 1t, nor did 1t
elude either their steady eye or their WE'LL
directed blow, till they had extirpated and
destroyed it to the smallest fiber. On this
question of principle, while actual suffering
was yet afar off, they raised their flag against
a power to which, for purposes of foreign
conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the
height of her glory, is not to be COM
pared; a power which has dotted over the
surface of the whole globe with her pos
sessions and military posts, whose morning
drum beat, following the sun and keeping
company with the hours, circles the earth with
one continuous and eunbroken strain of the
martial airs of England. The necessity Of
holding strictly to the principle upon which
free governments are constructed, and to those
precise lines which fix the partitions of power
between different branches, is as plain, If not
as cogent, as that of resisting, as our fathers
did, the strides of the parent country against
the rights of the colonies; because, whether
the power which exceeds its just limits be
foreign or domestic, whether 1t be the en-
croachment of all branches on the rights of the
people, or that of one branch on the rights OF
others, in either case the balanced and WELL
adjusted machinery OF free government is dis
turbed, and, If the arrangement go on, the
whole system must fall.
The Democratic party stands forth pre-
claiming the great truth to the country that
troops at the polls are dangerous to the lib
critics of the people. The principle is right,
and must triumph. If the right to place
troops at the polls is conceded the Republic
is gone. The Democratic party will not
recede. To back down would be treason.
Let Hayes stand by kis veto, and let the
Democratic party stand by its patriotic
declaration, "No troops at the polish and
rather than take backward step, let the
army perish If Hayes SO ordains.