The Potter Journal

The Duty of Republicans.

Philadelphia did a grand thing on Tuesday week. Her freemen defeated Vaux, the Administration candidate for Mayor, by a majority of 13,000! The English swindle went through Congress just four days previously.—Tioga Agitator.

Yes, it is "a grand thing." You feel it to be so; we feel it to be so; every friend of Freedom and Honesty the country over feels it to be so. The pro-slavery corruptionists, from Buchanan downwards, feel rebuked by it, and have in it a prophecy of sharper rebukes in future.

Would it not be a grander thing if a corresponding result could be produced next October in the State? You applaud the result in the city, but insist that the same means shall not be employed on a larger scale.

Long before there was a Republican party we were radically anti-slavery, as you know, good brother—yea, when most of the Republican leaders were pro-slavery. We shall not abate our anti-slavery zeal, now that we have help and encouragement we little dreamed of: nor shall we compromise principles. In matters of substance we reject compromises. No compromise on slavery, from the formation of the Constitution has found an advocate or apologist in us. But we hate the exclusiveness of party as cordially as we do the bigotry of sect. Small is our confidence in the utility of creeds, as a test of fellowship, whether framed by divines at Westminster or politicians at Philadelphia, and we are surprised, dear brother, to find you so strait-laced and intolerant.

A "New Dawn" once smiled upon you. Has the shadow of the sun on your dial gone backward? Some things do we believe which are not written in the Republican Confession of Faith. Hence we do not take that formulary as an infallible standard of political orthodoxy, and are not anxious that other people should take it for such. So long as the Republicans maintain their anti-slavery integrity we shall co-operate with them, and no longer.

We welcome the companionship of all who are opposed to the Lecompton Rascality, whether they are prepared to subscribe to the creed of the Republican National Convention or not. That they are opposed to the Rascality, and ready to resist it, is orthodoxy enough for us. No matter if some of them do dissent from our doctrines on other points and withhold consent from some measures we should be glad to carry. The issue now uppermost concerns the Kansas swindle and the Kansas swindlers. Let us settle that now and opportunity offers. Let "a grand thing" in Philadelphia, be followed by a grander thing throughout the State. And that this may be, do not claim for party what belongs only to mankind.—Honesdale Democrat.