Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1881-12-02
DEMOCRACY.

Dh<HOCaAOL'
That there is difference between the
man who is really Democrat and his |
neighbor who is, with equal sincerity, a
Republican, could be inferred from the make
up of human nature if there never had been
political platform written. In this coun-
try, as in all others, men are broadly distin-
guished by the opposing views they hold
of what is due to their fellow-men, to the
poorest as well as to the richest, to the most
illiterate not less than the best equipped and
most richly endowed mind
In England those who distrust the people
and think government should be carried on
by the more fortunate classes are called To-
ries, in Germany they are named Conserva
tives, in France they figure under various
titles as Bourbons and Imperialists; even in
Turkey the line is drawn, and Midhat Pasha
is in exile because he strove for Parliament
and Constitution, while in Russia, by the
thousands of families that mourn for sons
and daughters shot by the minions Of the
Gar, or dying death daily in the mines of
Siberia, all who have eyes can see that the
neyer-ending struggle is going on between
those who insist that the man, because he is
man, shall have every right that it falls
within the province of the government to
bestow, conserve or recognize.
Here in the United States, under all sorts
of vaz.ing sbapSs, the es.snc contest has gone
on since our government was established
AS against jefferson stood Hamilton; Jeffer-
son trusting the people, pleading for the
broadcast Democracy; Hamilton soothing at
popular rule, exerting himself to build mp a
not at all averse to having a monarchy set
up. Later came the alien and sedition strug-
gle; still later the agitation which won vic
tory for the Democracy and threw the doors
of our citizenship open to men OF foreign
birth; again, the Know Nothing contest,
and, within our own times, the Republican
party having administered upon the estate
of the Wings, we have the rise of the great
monopolies, renewed talk about the neces-
sity for a stronger government, references as
of old to the poor as the rabble, and laws
passed and kept on the statute book for the
benefit of great wealth. The struggle never
ceases. Every new generation yields a new
contingent TO both parties Emerson says,
in one of his essays, that if we had micro
scopes of sufficient power we should be able
to tell the Episcopalian from the Puritan in
embryo. AS much is true of the Democrat
and the man who distrusts or dislikes the
people. They are born so. Who ceases to
be Democrat, in this general sense at least
never was one, which is paradox, but none
the less a truth.
1t is not hard matter to pick out the
true Democrat, even under the most diverse
party colors. The man who strives to help
his fellow-man, and in particular lives up to
full recognition of his obligations to party
principle as therule in governing and form
ing his course of action in all political con.
tests, though there is prospect of neither re-
ward nor recognition, who is patient with
the people when they do wrong, who seeks
no privilege for himself that he does not
insist upon extending to Others of his party
and who deems it high privilege to labor
in the interest of good government is a true
Democrat-and he who fails TO recognize or
appreciate the obligations of party, the great
leading characteristics OF that great founder
ofthe Democratic party-never was a Demo-
crat