The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

FROM THE NEW-YORK HERALD.

TYRANNY OF PARTY.

For many years past there has been a tyranny exercised in this country, compared with which the tyranny of Bonaparte is liberty and freedom. This is the tyranny of party. Of all the oppressive and cruel powers exercised in this wicked world, the tyranny of party is the most insupportable to a man of an independent mind; and we are often astonished that freemen should so tamely submit to it. A party man has no will of his own; both his body and his mind are chained; he can neither hear, see nor feel for himself, everything must be done by the leaders of the party. But this is not the worst of it, he is often forced to think and act in direct opposition to his own sense of propriety and justice; nay more, he is under the necessity of not only outraging his own feelings, but of urging his neighbour to improper, foolish and wicked acts. He must use all his influence to persuade his neighbours to vote for measures which he knows to be unjust, impolitic and ruinous to his country; merely because they are the measures of the party. Men in this situation are the men who are boasting of American freedom. These are the liberty men of the United States. These are the men who cry up the republican institutions of our country—who extol the right of suffrage, as exercised in this enlightened section of the world. These are the men who are so fond of the honour of the nation—who commit outrages that disgrace human nature, and then declare that they are the only enlightened and civilized people on earth.

My countrymen! when will you exert your independence?—When will you rid yourselves of this most abject and most degrading state of slavery?—When will you have courage to act and think for yourselves?—When will you be able to exercise your right of suffrage without control?—When will you find it in your hearts to tell the demagogues who lead you by the nose, that they are but men, that their works are the works of darkness and that you will no longer follow nor be led by them?