Year: 1868

the only remedy Is change in ''the powers
that be-" and herein lies the golden opportu-
nifty for the Democratic Convention.


Here, too the great financial chief of the
nation during the war, Mr.. Chase, looms up
into the boldest relief as the man for the crisis.
But here some democratic Bourbon of the West
sounds the alarm:-''The banks-the national
banks. Beware of them, or they will buy up
the Convention for and sell out the party to
Chase" This is weak invention. The
banks, if undertaking to buy the Convention
for any man, would surely prefer to buy it for
Pendleton; for with his nomination Grants
election would be fixed fact, and so the
banks would feel perfectly safe. But upon the
suffrage we hear another devotee to democratic
principles objecting to Chase:-'He is COM
mitted to the radical policy of universal negro
suffrage, and we cannot endorse that abomna-
tion." Mr.. Chase does not require it. The
question may be considered as settled With
the restoration of the Southern States provided
for in the bills before the President (and which,
it is said, he will permit to become laws by
default) the constitutional amendment, article
fourteen, providing, among other things, that
suffrage and representation shall 60 together,
as each State for itself may elect, will become
part of the supreme law of the land, operative
in New York as in South Carolina. So, then,
by the Fourth of July, no doubt, this question
will be out of the way and with the States,
and beyond the reach of the democratic or
radical party, whatever else they may say in
their bills of restoration.


Military or civil government, then, as be-
tween Grant and Chase, is the only remaining
issue. On the finances we want an expert
enced statesman, and Chase, the founder of
the present system for the war, is the states
man to adapt it to the wants of peace. Under
his hands there will be no shock in this change
but safe and easy transition from debt to
redemption from high to low taxes and from
paper to specie. With General Grant as Presi
dent all this business will necessarily be left in
the hands of such financiers in Congress as But
ler and Schenck and the gold gamblers of Wall
street General Grant, as the embodiment Of the
military system, will, if elected be the proper
representative of the supremacy of military
law, while Chief Justice Chase, in his present
Office and record, stands before us the repre-
sentative and advocate of the supremacy of
the civil authorities. On this broad issue the
masses of the American people are ready for
their verdict. With this all important question
in the foreground, with Chase as the demo-
cratic nominee, all the issues of the war will
be merged in the paramount demands of restored
peace. If Grant led the army, Chase fed the
army of the Union, and 80 between them the
honors of the war will be fairly divided, and the
living issues of the day will decide this Presiden-
tial contest. On the other hand, let the Demo-
cratic Convention set up, not statesman, but
partisan-not man representing the issues
of 1868, but those of the democratic platform
Of 1856, and General Grant will walk round
the track, and radicalism in Congress, with a


new lease of power and free course before


it, will legislate us into military despotism,


backed by a moneyed oligarchy and still in


creasing bills of taxation, and permanen,


national debt