Year: 1868

EVeE SAW

 This is what the Republicans used to delight in calling the Government of the United States, aud the capital sin of the Southern people, which made them traitors and entitled them to the halter, was that they were try ing to break. mp "the best government the world ever saw" That this gov ernment is not the same Government it was then no sane or honest man will not pretend. Before the war the coun- try was great and prosperous, and the people happy. Trade, the "health of nations,a flowed without interruption through all its arteries. We were en- riching ourselves by our industry, and drawing heavy drafts upon all the na- lions of the earth for the difference in our exchanges. Our taxation was com paratively nothing, and was altogether involuntary. It was imposed upon what we consumed, and reached us in other ways. Villages and cities were sprlnging up in every direction from the Atlantic coast to the Western bor- der. Manufacturing establishments were rising like magic in every part of the land, and all the evidence of healthy growth and substantial pros perity were apparent to the casual ob- server.

 But more than this, we were govern ed by men who regarded the constit t. ton from which the Government had it's origin reverence and respect, and who obeyed its mandates and regarded it's prohibitions. We had three dis tinct and seperate departments in the Government--the Executive, the Leg islative, and the Judicial--each supreme within the boundaries of it's own au- thority, and neither possessing any au- thority to infringe upon the province of the other Then there was no clash of authority, no attempt on the part of either department to usurp the func- tions of the other. From the Gulf of Mexico to the Northern States, and from one ocean to the other, there was harmony, and the nation was grow ing great and respected.

 Note the change. We now have a Government with practically but one department--the executive and Judi cial having been absorbed by the Leg islative. We have a Government con- trolled and ruled by partisan majoli- ty i'll Congress solely for partisan pur- poses, and without any reference to the interest of the public. We have ten States excluded from the Union in de- liance of justice and law, ruled by mill itary dictators, without any right of appeal from their decission, and in those States VIC find that by disfran- chisement of whites and the lawless extension of the right of suffrage to negroes, that the local government and the control of the congressional and electoral representation is placed in the hands of the blacks, and that the white race is subordinated to them. We find the nation grooming under monstrous debt of which neither this generation nor the the next will see paid, and the people weighed down with a burden of taxation which para lyzes industry and stagnates trade. We have every species of taxation that ever was devised and swarms of reye- nue officers prying in to the business and incomes of every man and woman in the land. The President has been shorn of all his constitutional power, and the Supreme Court divested of its most important authority, and forbid den to exercise it's constitutional func- tons.

 Thus VI SC that "the best Govern ment the world ever saw" has been oyerthrown, and another one probably the worst the world ever saw, substi- tuted in it's place. Who is responsible for this vandal work? Not the people in the south, for they accomplished nothing in this direetion,nor did they attempt to do it. They found that the prejudices of the great mass of tue northern people were hostile to their interest and prompted them to constant aggressions upon their. peculiar institu- ton, and they determined to withdraw their States from the Union and, estab- fish governmental in which there would be harmony and peace and protection for their property. They proposed no outrage upon the government, desired no change in its form. and did not in- intend any Interference whatever.

 Bnt no matter what they did intend, they certainly accomplished nothing They failed in all they attempted and consequently cannot be held responsi- ble for the subyersion which has occur red to "the best government the world ever saw.n

 Then who is responsible? Tho an- swer is obvious. It is the party in power. The party which six years ago boasted so loudly that this was "the best government the woIld ever saw" For the basest party purposes they have made change after change, with no other object than the advancement of their own party schemes, until they uave practically destroyed both the Executive and the Judicial Depart ments, and left Congress with despotic power which that body has not the deceney to use with magnGnimity. This is what changed "the best govern ment the world ever saw into one