The Home Journal

The Living Issues of the Day.

The New York Express says: "The living issues of the day will unite the Democratic party when they meet a year hence to make their nominations, and thence to the election. If the common enemy do not or cannot understand this now, they will then. These living issues are obedience to the Constitution as a whole, the original articles, the later amendments, and the more recent amendments. Until they are changed by the supreme power of the people or the Supreme Court of the land, one and all will stand, and, therefore, Governor Hoffman was quite right in his Fourth of July letter, to the Sachems of St. Tammany, in saying that these amendments were not one of the issues of the day. Slavery is abolished, and suffrage is extended to all the States, the latter not in the way we could wish, nor in a righteous way, but in a way, nevertheless, beyond control except by again changing the fundamental law. If the discussion among political casuists means that the Democratic party do not endorse or approve, or in any way commend the manner of the recent amendments, it may as well end, for we have yet to see the Democratic journalist or member of the Democratic party, who does not denounce the act done and the manner of its execution. And yet no sensible man in the land, we presume, expects to see either slavery restored in the States, or suffrage taken from the negro. Many of the States, since the war, as with New York, have recognized by State legislation the fact of negro suffrage. All the States have, or will, in time, probably, do the same thing; and when the States thus act, no one will dispute their right to regulate suffrage for themselves, even though Congress claims the right over the whole subject by a forced amendment to the Constitution. The old enemies of the Constitution were those who departed from the letter and spirit of the fundamental law, as Alexander Hamilton, when he advocated a consolidated Government; the Federal party, when they sustained the dogmas of the Hartford Convention; the advocates of "the higher law" and "the irrepressible conflict," under the lead of Mr. Seward, and the Radical party, when they organized in 1856 and became victorious in 1860. The defeat of the Democratic party at Charleston, under the secession lead of Butler and his fire-eating companions from the South, was the defeat of the Constitution, and for ten years past the Constitution, in its best intent, spirit and purpose, has been prostrated by the ill-starred combinations against civil liberty and free government. The real "new departure," is to be from despotism and faction to the recognized rights of men and of States. There will under Democratic rule, again be less taxation and more accountability; less military government and more of civil authority; less usurpation by the Executive over the Federal Judiciary and Congress, and a clearer record of and respect for the rights of each department of Government, as laid down in the written law for the control of each of these departments. If we may never again see the blessings of a free government, as it existed from George Washington to the commencement of the civil war, we may at least hope to save what is left us in the Constitution of our fathers, despite the innovations which now distinguish and disfigure the administration of law. It is, therefore, worse than idle to waste time and breath on any of the impracticable issues of the dead past. We recognized slavery in 1860 because it was incorporated in the Federal Constitution. We recognize freedom to-day because, by common consent, slavery is no longer in the Constitution. After this come the rights of States, the usurpations of civil Executive power, rights of the Judiciary, and the necessity of selecting pure men for Judges; then questions of taxes, finances, and a departure from every innovation which has marked the Administrations during the last ten years. The object of saving the people and Government from threatened centralization is enough for one campaign. To save us from this evil of Reconstruction is worthy our best ambition and labors, for the profligacy, corruption, and waste of the day mainly grow out of the one man power in Washington."