Belford's Magazine, Volume II, No. 8, January, 1889

by Various

This fact gave us a Constitution under which, we have managed to live, comparatively prosperous, for a century. Had it been otherwise, our Constitution would have gone to pieces in the first twenty-five years of its existence. A constitution is a legal recognition of certain general rules of conduct that are ever the same under all circumstances. Legislation is the adaptation of those rules to individual cases; and as these vary and change with continuously new conditions, a fixed application in a constitution is impossible. For this restriction, as far as it goes, we have to thank the States and not the sagacity of the fathers.

The Constitution was scarcely enacted before the communism of a paternal form began to manifest itself. The Federal party was of this sort. It 232 sneered at and fought the sovereignty of the people, and found its governing element in a class that was supposed to hold in itself the intelligence and virtue of the people. It has departed and been done to death, not by the people, who failed to comprehend or feel the situation, but by the same cause that created the Constitution,—and that was the jealous opposition of the States to a centralization of power at Washington.

After the death of the Federal party the Whig organization was formed, on the same line and for the same purpose as those of its Federal predecessor. Henry Clay, its author, an eloquent but ignorant man, formulated his American system, that was a small affair in the beginning, but had deadly seeds of evil in its composition. Mr. Clay saw the necessity for manufactures in the United States; and as capital necessary to their existence in private hands could not be obtained, he proposed that the government should intervene through a misuse of the taxing power and supply the want. It was a modest want at first. “Let us aid these infant industries,” he said, “until they are strong enough to stand alone, and then the government may withdraw and leave competition to regulate prices.” It was a plausible but insidious proposition.

This was fought bitterly by the South, not altogether from a high ground of principle, although the argument was made that the government at Washington had no such power under the Constitution, but the main motive was self-interest. The South was an agricultural region, and found in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco staples that had their better, indeed their only, market in Europe, and saw no sense in trammelling it with laws to benefit Eastern capital. The American system was having a rough time and bidding fair to die out, when the sectional issue between the North and South culminated in war, and driving not only the South but the democracy from the government, left the paternal party in power.

This organization was made up mainly of Whigs. The abrupt dissolution of that party threw in the newly formed Republican organization the majority that from the first until now has governed its movements. How patriotic a party founded on property is, we learn from its first act after securing control of Congress. In the terrible war that followed secession, the greatest of dangers that threatened success was in European interference. Common sense, to say nothing of patriotism, dictated that Congress should at least abstain from measures likely to offend the governments abroad, if it did not do all in its power to conciliate. Greed recognized no such duty. Almost the first measure of any importance introduced and passed to a law was the Morrill tariff, that slapped the greatest war powers of Europe in the face. Under pretence of raising a war revenue, they made a deadly attack on resource from that source, for they well knew that as they increased the duties they lessened the income.

The panic and distress that followed this measure in all the markets of the world can well account for the deadly hostility to our government felt abroad. Small wonder that while arms were furnished the South in the 233 greatest abundance, cruisers were fitted out in English ports to prey upon our helpless commerce. The greater danger of official recognition was only averted by the stubborn stand taken by Great Britain; and as it was, we now know that had the South been able to continue the war ninety days longer that intervention would have come. A French army, sent there for that purpose, would have invaded our lands from Mexico, while the fleets of allied France and England would have dissipated our so-called blockade, lifted the Confederacy’s financial credit to par, and we would have been called on to make terms of peace at Philadelphia.

All this gathered evil was shattered at Nashville by the gallant Thomas and his noble Army of the Cumberland, when he not only defeated the fifty thousand veterans under Hood, but annihilated an army.

This was the birth of the communism of wealth that is to govern our country for the next four years. Of course it is absurd to charge nearly a half of our people with corrupt motives and unpatriotic conduct. We have no such intent. We are only striving to show that the success of the Republican policy is fatal to the Republic. This party, as we have said, is in no sense a political organization. It is a great combination of private interests that seek to use the government to further their own selfish ends. Governments through all the ages have been the deadly enemies of the people they governed. Ours, controlled by the Republican party, makes no exception to the rule. The gigantic trusts, or combinations, are eating the substance out of honest toil, and back of them stands the awful shadow of a powerful organization making those trusts possible, and doing to the people precisely the cruel wrong it was created to prevent. Palaces multiply as hovels increase; and while millionaires are common, the million sink back to that hopeless poverty of destitution that has the name of freedom, as a mockery to their serfdom.

THE INFAMY OF IT.

For years past it has become more and more patent to the people of the United States that the ballot has come to be a commercial affair, and instead of serving its original purpose of a process through which to express the popular will, represents only the money expended in its use. For a long time it was abused through stuffing, false counts, repeating, and switching tickets. In the late Presidential election we seemed to have passed from that stage to open and shameless bribery.