The Daily Dispatch

The Press and the Man on Horseback.

[From the Baltimore Gazette.]

If the people of this country have reached that point of degradation that they can submit to have their elections held under the surveillance of Federal officials, backed by Federal bayonets, they are ready for the last act of the revolutionary drama which has been in progress ever since the war closed. It will need but one step further to change what was once a Government of limited powers into a military despotism.

Let them not lay the flattering unction to their souls that there is no danger that their liberties will be overthrown. Let them look back and see the vast strides that have been made in the centralization of power at Washington during the past five years, and then ask themselves whether these changes are not ominous of still greater usurpations in the near future. Do they imagine the rights that yet remain to them are any more sacred in the eyes of the Radicals than those of which the southern people have, to all intents and purposes, been deprived? Have they the folly to suppose that the conspirators who have violated the rights of States south of the Potomac will respect the rights of States north of that line? Is it a little thing that those conspirators have interpolated into the Constitution amendments that were never legally adopted by the people; that they have prohibited the supreme Court from passing upon the political measures of Congress; that they have subordinated the executive to the legislative department of Government by the passage of the tenure-of-office act; and that, by partisan legislation of the most outrageous kind, they have put restraints upon the elective franchise for the purpose of perpetuating, at all hazards, their control of the Government?

Does anybody suppose that the recent act of Congress prescribing new rules for the naturalization of aliens, and authorizing Federal officials to supervise the registration of voters, and to keep watch and ward over the ballot-box, were framed for any other purpose than to obstruct and harass those who are opposed to the Radical party? The approach to the ballot-box should be free to all. The laws of the State for the regulation of elections give ample protection to all citizens, without respect to party, who may have reasonable cause of complaint against either the officers of election or the judges appointed to preside at the polls. The right of each State to prescribe the mode of holding elections within its borders and the qualifications of voters has never until now been denied.

The sole value of elections, as giving expression to the will of the people, lies in the perfect freedom with which they are conducted. Yet the following suggestive picture was presented at the recent election in Philadelphia:

"The marines are stationed in a line before the polls. The police were ordered away. Ten marines kept guard in the street. The line of voters was again formed, and they passed in their ballots. On one side of the window stood the Major; on the other side a subordinate officer. Two marines with loaded muskets stood at support arms within four feet of the window. No one save the election officers and the voters was permitted to come near the window. Thus did the force of arms supersede the force of civil law at an election poll:"

Since then all the available soldiers and marines east of the Mississippi have been ordered east, to be held in readiness to participate in like manner in the congressional elections that take place early next month. The mere concentration of these forces in the neighborhood of the larger cities on such an occasion is more than a menace—it is a deliberate insult offered to those who once were proud to call themselves a free people. Four hundred deputy marshals, supported by Federal bayonets, are to be placed over the voters of this city on the 8th day of November next. It is an outrage for which we have but one retort—that of defiance. We are a law-abiding community. We hold that every registered voter has the right to cast his ballot without let or hindrance from any one, and are prepared to defend him in the exercise of that right. But we demand that our own civil authorities shall be allowed to take cognizance of any infractions of the law by either party; that our police shall not be ordered away from the polls, as they were in Philadelphia, and that if the Federal officials undertake to make arrests without first obtaining warrants for the same they shall be held rigidly to account for the outrage. We can bear much, but there is a point beyond which we cannot go without sacrificing our own sense of self-respect.