Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1879-05-01
Anxious About Civil Liberty.

There's something rather touching IN
the attitude of the Democrats in Con-
gress toward the election laws. They
are so certain that Federal supervision
of elections will be fatal to civil liberty
and free institutions! The provisions of
the law which permit the use of troops
to preserve the peace at elections, though
they have existed for several years and
never yet been perverted to the over
throw of civil liberty, and though their
continuance is not insisted upon, excite
profoundest alarm. The orders under
which, on some previous occasions,
troops have been held in readiness to put
down election riots, are cited to show
that it is possible under these dreadful
laws to upset the civil power and es-
tablish military despotism. Our Dem
ocratic friends have apparently just
awakened to a sense of danger. To be
sure we have not army enough to over
throw anything, but all the same there's
the possibility of its being used for the
subversion of our liberties, and they
will not be comforted until the laws on
this subject are all wiped out and forty
millions of citizeus are relieved of their
fearful terror of 10000 soldiers. The
Constitution also is endangered by the
election laws, and the reserved rights of
the States are trampled under foot by
the presence of Federal supervision at
the polls. Free electionsw is the cry.
There must be no inference with the
rights of voters and no Instructions to
free ballot. The devotion these gentle
men show to the Constitution and civil
liberty and free elections, and all that, is
something remarkable.
And still the strain seems somewhat
familiar. They were always going on in
this way about something or other.
They were always working themselves
up to high pitch of excitement because
their opponents had done or were about
to do something destructive of the Con-
stitution, or the Union, or the rights of
man. And it is singular circumstance
that none of the things they have been
so exercised over have ever happened,
except as the results of their own work.
They hammered away for years upon
the charge that the Republicans were
trying to break up the Union. In the
end they bent all their energies to
break it up themselves, and the Repub-
hcans had to put them down with the
strong arm to save it. They ranted
about the sacredness of the Constitution,
and denounced the Republicans for at
tempting to subvert it. The last thing
they did before they went out of power
was to set up the theory that this sacred
instrument had not vigor, vitality, or
force enough to keep itself alive; and it
was the Republicans who prevented
their destroying it altogether. So it al
ways happens that the thing they make
the most Outcry over is the thing they
are doing or getting ready to do them
selves. They are excessively worried
just now about the freedom of elections. /
1t is matter of record that no honest |
voters have ever been obstructed in the |
exercise of their rights in this country, |
except by the Democratic bull-doZers at |
the South and plug-uglies in the large |
cities of the North.
The Union was never in any danger
except from these Democratic Union
Savers; the Constitution never in any
peril except as these men attempted to |
wipe it out; and there is now no danger
whatever of any interference with free
and honest elections except as they re-
sort to violence and fraud to effect their
purposes. This sudden awakening to
the danger the county is in from the
election laws is but repetition of the
Did dodge, and it will not work this time.
1t has been played too often.-[N. Y.
Tribune. l.