The Portland daily press., 1882-09-09
Boston TravAllar /

What Does Democracy Stand For?
The first guns of the fall campaign will soon
be heard Arkansas and Vermont may be re-
garded as signalling the advance on both sides.
The issues are about made up, the standards
are set, and the rallying cries that echo from
State to State are telling, with tolerable clear
ness what the contending parties mean.
Tt is a good time for the average voter the
honest. intelligent citizen, to whom political
parties have no interest except as they repre-
sent ideas, sustain principles and promote
progress, to put his ear to the ground and listen
to the campaign slogan of the opposing clans,
as 1t Is borne on the breeze from the four cor
ners of the Union. What does Democracy
stand for? What music is it marching to, as it
wheels into line in the different States for its
biennial attack upon "the party that has too
long been retained ID power?" In Indiana
and Ohio it is marshalled for the defence of
the liquor traffic, exactly as it was marshaled
there twenty-five years ago for the defence Of
the Slave Power The motto inscribed on its
banners is-"No sumptuary laws, and no Sab
bath Day." The breweries of Ohio and the
distileries of Kentucky want the people to
have more CELEBRITY personal liberty" and
find that the restrictions placed by Republican
Legislatures upon the sale of their freedom
fostering products are especially oppressive a.
reg ards the Lords Day. They embody, in
fact the spirit of that crude and barbarous code
which saws, "Six days shalt thou work, ETC.,
and the seventh day thou shalt rest" The
big brewers of the West and the great disti-
ers of the South have struck hands and, in the
sacred name of liberty, propose to write in
place of that obsolete injunction, "sx days
shalt thou work, and the seventh thou shalt
drink 1t is the cause of the German saloon
VS.. the Christian Sunday, the open bars and
free rum of Europe against the open Bibles
aud the free schools of America. And, as
usual, the Democracy is on The hellwara side
of the issue.
Well what does Democracy stand for inMaine?
There it is not fighting for personal liberty"
or freedom to fiddle, as in Ohio and Indiana
1t has planted itself in the Pine Tree State on
the grand doctrine of the supremacy of the Ex-
ecutive to the laws he is set to execute. The
Supreme Court is not supreme is It's Maine
slogan. 1t is Plaisted and partisan dictator
ship vs. the judiciary and the sacred sane
tions of the Constitution. Hitherto it has been
the proud boast of New England Common
wealths that their Supreme Courts have never
spoken but to be obeyed But the new regime
for which Democracy stands in Maine to-day
declares the subordination of the Judiciary to
the Executive, and leaves the Governor clothed
with full powers to interpret her constitution
and her laws as he pleases, and apply them as
he sees fit. If the Democracy of Maine stands
for anything else in this canvass except the
right of the Governor to nullify the State Con-
stitution, suppress the Council, defy the Courts,
ignore the fundamental law as declared by its
authoritative exI onent, and constitute him.
self an absolute ruler, Independent OF the Coun-
Gil, and superior to the Supreme Bench, we
fail to discover it, except in so far as PlaistedS
candidacy may be still held to represent that
forlorn and wretched delusion which sought to
base the prosperity of the nation on lrredeem-
able paper, strengthen its honor and its credit
by reputation, and declare to the world the
idiotic dogma that "a promise to pay is equiva-
lent to payment
| What else does the Democracy stand for in
the State campaigns now opened? In Michi-
gan it is denouncing 'the tariff, /" and in Mas
sachusetts it will be doing presently the same
thing. Under this tariff the country has
grown in twenty years from thirty to fifty mil
lions of people; the value Of its farms has in
creased from three billions to ten billions of
dollars; its annual product of pig iron has ad-
vanced from 919,770 tons to 4,925.414 tons, it
has added nearly 10000 miles to its railroad
system, nine-tenths of them covered with rails
make of iron taken from American mines and
manufactured in American shops by American
labor, paid for with wages averaging 80 per
cent higher than those paid in Free Trade
England for the same work; it has increased
our merchandise exports, the products of
American factories and Stops, from $685., &c.
067 to 1886, 63S ,658; it has enabled us, by the
immense revenue it has yielded, to pay Off the
national debt by leaps and bounds that have
amazed the financiers of Europe, besides giving
the man who earned five dolla a week in Eng
| land ten dollars here for the same quality and
amount of labor. And the Democracy stands
against that record.
And in the South what does it stand for?
Solid for the suppression of the freedmanYs
ballot, for his reduction to peonage that is
| scarcely one remove from slavery, for 1.-THE SUI
premacy of Anglo-Saxon civilization which
means in Mississippi the defence and giorinca-
ton of balot-box suffers, as in the recent Ok
ford county trials; in Alabama the murder of
colored men by way of preliminary canvass,
as in the recent atrocious lynching OF Jack
Turner" and the torture of other black citi-
zens OF Chocta@ county; in Georgia and Texas,
the colored chain-gangs, the contract-convict
system and the infamous sentences OF i've and
ten years for petty misdemeanors; and in all OF
them hundreds of thousands of colored and
white children growing up in Ignorance; closed
school-houses, misappropriated echool funds,
and a social condition of the masses that is the
shame and scandal of American civilization.
And that is what Democracy stands for at the
South!
AS the bulwark of the breweries! AS the sa-
viour of the whiskey-still! AS the Zoe OF the
Christian Sabbath! AS the sneaking sympa-
thizer with the infamy of Utah! AS the enc
nv of the American wage-earner, seek ing to
put his wages back to the European level! AS
the opponent of the tariff, the national bank
ing system and honest, hard money,-the three
pillars on which the prosperity OF the Repub-
lie securely rests! AS the enemy OF equal
rights and the merciess suppressor OF free SUI
frage in the South! That is where and for
what the Democracy stands to-day. Does any
intelligent voter in Maine, or anywhere else,
believe. for moment, that the future OF his
State. or of the Republic, can be safely Ell
trusted to party that SO stands?