The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1892-10-26
SUPPOSE 1T HAD. WON.
What Democratic Victories Would Have
Meant for the Country.

What Democratic Victories Would Have
Meant for the Country.
The Republican party made its first
presidential nomin alton thirty-six years
ago and was beaten. Four years later
IL elected Mr.. Lincoln, and from that
date down there has been only one Dem
ocratic president of the United States.
Through all these years the Democracy
has been contending that the Republican
party is destroying the country, stran-
Cling the constitution, overthrowing
popular liberty and perpetrating other
eutrages which would require from now
until election day to recount.
Suppose Democracy had been the VIC
tor from 1850 down, what, taking that
party on the record it has made, would
DO the condition of the republic?
First-We should have not one but
two republics. The southern states were
determined to secede, and the Demo-
cratic party would have allowed them
to go rather than make war to keep
them in the Union. 1t maintained the
doctrine that there was no power in the
Union to coerce sovereign state; that
q state could remain in or go out just as
1t pleased. The Republican party sue
cessfully combated that heresy in the
forum OF debate and crushed il to death
on thousand battlefelds 1t was the
greatest service rendered TO the republic.
Second-If Democracy had won, we
should today present TO all mankind the
repellent picture of the only nation In
the world maintaining the diabolical
doctrine that man has the right to hold
property In man. We should have the
slave pen and the slave auction block In
the market place Of all the towns and
villages below the old line Of Mason and
Dixon, or whatever other line southern
aggression should have demanded and
northern Democratic cowardice conced-
ed. Is there today Democrat in all
the four and forty states who would
wish for the restoration of that "insti-
tuition" to maintain which Democracy
made the bloodiest war Of modern times?
Third-f Democracy had uniformly
won during all these years, our skilled
industries, which challenge the admira-
ton Of the world, would scarcely have an
existence. We should be the vassals of
Europe for every manufactured article
from common screw up to the mag.
nificent machinery that will drive tho
new Columbia through the waves at
speed never yet attained by vessel of
war. Look at the mills and factories
that rise in every town and village be-
fxun
the greatest and the best paid army of
labor in the world. Around them clus-
ter the church, the home, the school
house. One and all they are the crea-
ton of the tariff. That is the seed from
which they have sprung. There is no.
Il single one of those manifold and
mighty industries which the Democratic
party has not endeavored to crush out
by proposed legislation that happily has
been defeated.
If, then, during the last thirty years
Democracy had won and Republicanism
had lost, we should have
First-The affirmation of the right of
secession and the disruption Of the
Union.
Second-Slavery would be declared to
be divine institution, and it would be
held that black man has no rights
which white man is bound to respect.
Third-Protection TO American indus
try would be high crime and misde-
ineanor.
What a calamity that these Demo-
cratic ideas and principles have not pre-
vailed during the last thirty years!-
New York Recorder.