The Republicans of Connecticut have acquitted themselves nobly. The result of the battle on Monday was more signally favorably(?) to the Republican party than even the most sanguine dared to hope for. In view of the means employed to defeat the Republican State ticket - the large amounts of money subscribed by the New York Cotton Merchants for the purpose of subsidizing the manufacturing interest of the State; the colonization of voters in all the large towns and cities, and the threats of a withdrawal of patronage by the South in the event of Republican victory - these things were all brought to bear upon the struggle of last Monday. Probably no election in that State was ever so warmly contested by both parties, and no struggle ever resulted in a more glorious victory for Right over organized Wrong. Our friends have secured the control of the State Government in all its departments, having a two-thirds majority of the House, and a working majority in the Senate. The majority for the State ticket will not fall much in any below 1000. All hail, Connecticut! May Rhode Island do as nobly for Freedom to-day."
"Moses Horner, suspected of the larceny of his own body; arrested by Dept. US Marshal Jenkins near Harrisburg; taken through lanes, alleys, and byways, on foot, to Middletown station in the night time; put aboard a smoking car, and smuggled into Philadelphia, with great fear and trembling on the part of his captors, and lodged in Moyamensing prison; taken before Judge Cadwalader, and charged with having stolen from one Butler, of Virginia, $1,500 worth of soul and body, the property of said Butler, so claimed; tried, found guilty of a black skin, of a slave mother, of stealing himself and making off with the property, and sentenced to - a life-time of recreation in the rice swamps of Georgia! Found guilty, as above, sentenced to penal servitude for the term of his natural life, and Philadelphia wild with joy thereat! We do not hear that the old bell in Independence Hall tolled; on the contrary we are led to suppose that the sacred relic, had it not been tongueless, would have rung a joyous peal in honor of the return of Moses Horner into hopeless slavery....
The majesty of the law, and the loyalty of Philadelphia to King Cotton - these have been once more vindicated at one and the same time. Philadelphia has done a fair and square thing for once; and if southern merchants do not patronize her traders henceforth, there is not such thing as honor among thieves. We have particular reference to the demonstrations of joy which took place after Moses Horner was remanded into the bonds of the oppressor, rather than to the execution of the law. With that matter we not purpose to deal - for all laws - whether in accord with Heaven's or in direct contravention of the same - must be observed. It is wrong to rebel against law, however unjust and oppressive it may be. It was wrong for our Revolutionary sires to rebel against the laws of the mother country; it was wrong; nay, more - it was treasonable. Both those were rude times. Our sires were rude and uncouth, and put God's law above all laws. Had they lived in this enlightened age, when the law, as given to the lawgiver of israel, is only second to the statutes at large, those misguided men must have forborne the commission of those treasonable acts which now emblazon the page of history.
But let no irreverent tongue defame those noble sires of a nobler posterity. - They acted up to the best light given them, and are not censurable for errors of judgment, into which they fell long years before the wisdom of the continent was concentrated, and concentered in Congresses and State Legislatures.
Therefore, with the Fugitive Slave law, and its execution, we have no quarrel here. If Moses Horner was a slave - the chattel of Mr. Butler, why, under the law, infamous and heaven-defying as it is, he must go back to his owner. But with this celebration of the return of a freeman into bondage worse than death (if Jefferson may be authority) this rejoicing in the reduction of a free man into the scale of brute; with this latest development of loyalty we take issue. And we feel confident to predict, that Philadelphia traders and church-goers, will put on sackcloth, and burrow in ashes, for this offence against public decency, this open defiance of Heaven's law of kindness, and love to man."
"When, some weeks since, we remarked incidentally that the tendencies of the party in power were unmistakably towards the establishment of monarchical power, it was not without reference to the history of the Democratic party for fifteen years last past, and a thoughtful comparison of its public acts and declared policy with that of parties in other countries, which have enjoyed long- continued rule only to become at last the oppressors of the people from whom they derived their power.
While professing the most zealous regard for the rights of the people, the leaders of the Democratic party in modern times, have studied, how best and most completely they could reduce the masses to unquestioning obedience. It is not necessary to trace the progress of these ambitious men in the partial attainment of their ends. It is sufficient to know; that in process of time the quantity of measures came to be determined not by their nature, but by the political name of the party advocating them. This was the first great step towards monarchical rule. It is properly characterized; because so much of the power of that party as was obtained in that way, was obtained by sheer clap- trap; and monarchical rule has `no visible means of support' anywhere, except clap-trap.
The declaration of war against Mexico by President Polk was simply an experiment. Napoleonic coup d`etats are not in that party's line of business. It has a few Dantons, a score of Robespierres, and a Marat or two, but no Bonapartes. Its leaders fight or run, as the case may be; that is - they were eager to plunge the country into a war with Mexico; and they were quite eager to run away from `fifty-four-forty' when England set her lion to guard the boundary.
The declaration of war against Mexico by Mr. Polk was an usurpation by one man of powers delegated to Congress. It was the first prominent manifestation of the monarchical tendency of the Democratic party, of which the later history of the party affords any record. It was an act of despotism, and it found few friends in the beginning, save the scum of large cities (which makes Democratic Presidents) and the political stock-gamblers who saw a way to regain the lost fortunes in fat contracts for army supplies. The act was an experiment, and, it must be owned, succeeded will -beyond the most sanguine expectations of the plotters.
The establishment of the `two-thirds rule' in the Baltimore Convention was another despotic manifestation, and one bearing more directly upon the interests of the country than very many suppose. By this rule, the nominating power is thrown into the hands of a minority of the party in the Convention. It was concocted and put in force by the Slaveholders themselves, and by it the choice of twelve States may be forced upon the remaining States in Convention assembled, against their will. The operation of the rule is, therefore, to concentrate power in the hands of the few, in disregard to the wishes of the many, and is decidedly monarchical in its drift.
But perhaps the most notable manifestation of this tendency may be seen in the deliberately plotted scheme to force an oppressive organic law upon the people of Kansas, notwithstanding the indignant protest of not less than five-sixths of her people. That infamous law was nothing less than an open bill of sale of the rights, privileges and immunities of the citizens of Kansas, and the consideration therefor a few square miles of land. The alternative presented to the people of that Territory was this: Accept this law, with Slavery as an institution, and we give you the means of self- protection; but reject it, and we abandon you to the tender mercies of the Missouri Ruffians - Thus was threatened meanly added to coerce a people incorruptible by bribes.
We have not enumerated a tenth part of the monarchic signs attendant upon the progress of the Democratic Party, nor is it necessary. Those cited are direct to the point, and were any further evidence needed - is it not written in the late protest of James Buchanan? Is not the old doctrine there promulgated? `The king can do no wrong!'"
"Does it occur to the tyrants in Washington, when they declare that he election of a Republican President would signal the downfall of the Government, how much is involved in such a declaration, if it have any foundation in fact? Clearly , it is to overthrow the rule of the party in power. And what is it to overthrow that rule? Clearly, it is to depose the most wickedly corrupt party which this, or any other country, ever produced and suffered to bear rule, even to the very verge of ruin. It follows, then, that if the overthrow of the reigning dynasty is to destroy the Government, the Government has no stability or strength except the corruption of the party which wields the power and handles the purse.
Tyrants cling to power with a death grip. Question the wisdom of their rule, assert the right of the governed to change, or abolish the government when it become dangerous to the liberties of the subject, and the false prophets of oppression are swift to predict disaster as the inevitable result of change. Right, conscious of its strength, fears nothing from the assaults of an open and declared foe. Wrong, holding its place through fraud and corruption, fears innovation. Its highest object is self- aggrandizement. It cannot endure a rival, because it possesses on innate consciousness of strength.
Is the Republican party inimical to the prosperity of the country? Casting the eye over New England whose Executives and Legislatures have been Republican for years, do we behold evidences of that ruin which is prophesied of a National republican rule? Was New England ever more prosperous than at this very time, her people happier? Were her factories ever busier, her agriculture more profitably productive, her commerce more extensive? Was intelligence ever more universally diffused among her workers, her arts more flourishing, her free schools and colleges more liberally endowed? - She has fought her way up against the disadvantages of a sterile soil and a climate virable and rigorous, and now presents to the world an example of enterprise, intelligence and success, without a parallel in the world. And her greatness has culminated under Republican rule. Do we find any foundation for the charge preferred by the party in power against the Republican party, in the condition of New England.
Turn to New York - the Empire State, with its network of railways and canals gathering up the products of labor everywhere within its limits, and pouring them in a ceaseless stream into the markets and warehouses of its great commercial center; was New York ever more prosperous, was she ever so rich in all that constituted material greatness as she is to-day? Yet her Executives and Legislatures for a term of years have been Republican - Look at her institutions of learning; look at her `People's College' now being constructed - endowed by a wise liberality that cannot be too much applauded - where the poorest, if they choose, may secure a liberal education to their children at a merely nominal cost. These are some of the traces of that ruin, prophesied of the rule the Republican Party.
Turn to Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa. In four of these States, if memory serves, republicanism has borne rule form the time it became an organized party. have these States ever made grander progress than during the last four years. Was Ohio ever so great and prosperous as she is this day? Or Iowa, or any of them? Yet Republicans have guided and controlled the affairs these States for years - through the panics of `57-8, as well as through the better times of `59-`60. Neither Republican Legislatures nor Executives have ruined these great and prosperous States. Why, then should the election of Republican President result in the downfall of the Government?
It will not so result; but it will, of course, involve the downfall of the Democratic party - a thing more to be dreaded by its corrupt leaders than any ill that could befall the country - even to the utter overthrow of its liberties. We have heard these covert threats and croaking prophecies so many times that they are no longer amusing. caught up by the little echoes here and there subsisting on treasury pap, they have been bandied and battered into meaningless phrases, as empty of sense as the heads of their concoctors are of brains."