Orleans Independent Standard

Harper's Weekly, and Mr. Beecher.

Harper's Weekly has an excellent article in review of Mr. Beecher's letter which has become the favorite campaign missile of the "Bread and Butternut party." Beecher scouts the idea that the South will be able to govern the North, or if it can through numerical strength, says it ought to until the idea of the South, the inequality of human rights, can be overthrown, and made through free speech, schools and churches, to give place to the Northern idea of equality of human rights. The answer to this is "How can you determine numerical preponderance if you allow those at the South who deny equal rights to speak not only for themselves but for their opponents who are not supposed to speak at all. In a tremendous struggle to plant the Government upon its true principle of equal rights is there any sound reason why the enemies of that principle should be allowed an unfair advantage in voting thereby because they have not succeeded in destroying the Government altogether,"

Mr. Beecher declared that we must not attempt to do by enactment for the freedman what can only be done by "time and various spiritual influences, that the freedmen like all races in this country must take their chance, they must not be classified." The answer to this is exceedingly apt and disposes of Mr. Beecher and his "moral generalities" that have no application to the situation. "Who is trying to classify them? the States which make them by law a distinct class, or Congress, which declares them equal citizens with the rest of us? "They must take their chance," says Mr. Beecher. Very well, are they not entitled to as fair a chance as the rest of us? and, according to all experience of human nature, will they have that fair chance if their neighbors are to be rewarded by increased political power for an attempt to deprive them of all chances whatever?"

Six years ago the eloquent voices of Wm. H. Seward and Henry Ward Beecher the one speaking from the forum, and the other from the pulpit, were the very trumpet calls of Liberty and Equal Rights. To-day we hear Seward uttering a plea for the President and the cause of the Inequality of Human Rights of which the President is the Representative, we hear Beecher's voice in the camps of the enemy, encouraging them in their wicked attitude by talking generalities about "time, civilization and spiritual influences." Thank God, victory is not lost though the leaders may fall.—Burlington Times.