Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1896-11-02
TEE PEOPLE !
SHALL GOVERN.
They Are to Rule This Ma
ton, Not to Be Ruled.
They Must Assert Their
Sovereign Power.
Government Based on the
Rights of rlanhood.
Not on Property and Its Priv
ilegeS.

.
"We have nobody with us but the
people" said Mr.. Bryan the other day
in closing description of the exodus
which has taken out of the Democratic
party every supporter of trusts and
monopolies, every dependent on usury,
every speculator on the necessities of the
people, every beneficiary of the corpora
tions which wish to substitute their own
cheap and intrinsically worthless paper
for money of the mints, every upholder
of the British gold standard and the
British bureaucratic system of life ten
ure in office, every man who believes
that corporation attorneys on the federal
bench are greater than the people and
entitled to rule the people without ap-
peal even to the ballot box, and, finally,
every officeholder who can be intimidat-
ed by president and cabinet in sym
pathy with Wall street credit brokers,
bond speculators and cornerers of gold
1t is certainly true, and it is the cen
tral fact Of this campaign, that I'VE
have nobody with US but the peoplel'
But it is not true for the first time.
/ 1t was true in Andrew Jackson's day
when Judge Story, Foderalist support
er of Adams, described the jackson
Democrats as the "most vulgar and
/ gross people i'll the nation. And it was
true still earlier, for in describing the
conditions which ushered in the great
Democratic victory of 1900, when the
Federalist party was virtually wiped
out, Thomas Jefferson wrote his friend
and Virginia neighbor, Mazzei, then in
France, a letter in which he gives a
strikingly accurate outline, not only of
that campaign, but of this
1.-The aspect of our politics" Jeffer-
son writes, "has wonderfully changed
since you left us. In place of the noble
love of liberty and republican govern
ment which carried us triumphantly
through the war an Anglican party has
sprung up, whose avowed purpose it is
to draw US over to the substance, as
they have already done to the forms, of
the British government. While the
main body of our citizens remain true
to republican institutions y against
us are the executive, the federal judici-
airy, two out of three branches of the
legislature, all the officers of the govern
ment, all tinid men who prefer the
calm of despotism to the boisterous sea
of liberty, all British merchants and
Americans trading on British capital,
all speculators and brokers, and with
them the banks and dealers in the pub
lie funds Omitted States bonds), a CON
trivance invented for the purpose of cor
ruption and for assimilating us to the
rotten as we'll as to the sound parts Of
the British model. "
So succinctIy and comprehensively
does this sum up existing conditions
that it is hard to realize that century
has passed since it was written. The
Democracy is fighting the campaign of
1900 over again. Now, as then, cries of
treason are raised against it by the ene-
mics of popular government. Its leaders
are denounced as enemies of law and or
der, as Jacobins, as dangerous anarch-
lists, just as Jefferson was then denounc-
ed by every one who believed, as the
Federalists did then, as the plutocrats
do now, that government should be
based on property and its privileges, not
on manhood and its rights.
But the Democracy did not turn then
1t did not hesitate. Never so strong as
when it has been deserted by all who
fear the people, it pushed forward to
victory under the leadership of the great
man who first laid down Trust the peo-
plel" as the fundamental principle of
government.
1t was the greatest discovery ever
made i'll the politics Of the world-this,
that the people can be trusted. Never in
modern times was it factor in the
practical politics of any country until
the campaign of 1900, when the author
Of the Declaration of Independence took
the field in support of the proposition
that the people are the government
that they are not to be ruled in Amer
lea, but are to rule it.
He had no one with him on that prop.
osition but the people. But he was not
frightened. He had behind him all the
centuries of the dark ages of oppression
and class government. He had before
him all the ages of the glorious progress
which is being worked now through
confidence in the people and belief in
their capacity for indefinite improve
ment through the indefinite extension
of liberty. He dared to trust the people,
and with him as their leader they won |
their first great victory under the decla-
ration that ell men are created free and
with equal fights under the law.
Let nc Democrat fear the result. In
spite of the hundreds of millions of
wrongfully held wealth being used
against them, the people of the United
States can assert their power to govern.
And they will do itl-St. Louis Post
Dispatch.