Grayville Weekly Herald

We take the following from Brownlow's Knoxville (Tenn.) Whig, of March 29, 1856:

Hon. James Buchanan.

As this gentleman is in high favor with and will probably be the nominee for the Presidency by the faction which insults the memory of Thomas Jefferson by calling themselves Democrats, it may not be amiss to show what he thought of them in 1815.

Foreign influence, limited as it was then, alarmed him much, and he trembled for the "wild and visionary theories" of those who courted it. But that influence having now become a powerful and ponderous "make weight" in political contests, surely there is a greater necessity for "banishing this fiend from our society." The extract is from a speech delivered by Mr. Buchanan in the city of Lancaster, on the 4th of July, 1815:

We ought to use every honest exertion to turn out of power those weak and wicked men who have abandoned the political path marked out for this country by Washington and whose wild and visionary theories have been at length tested by experience and found wanting. Above all we ought to drive from our shores foreign influence, and cherish exclusively American feeling. Foreign influence has been in every age the curse of Republics. Her jaundiced eyes see all things in false colors. The thick atmosphere of prejudice, by which she is forever surrounded, excludes from her sight the light of Heaven. Whilst she worships the nation for this very crime, she curses the enemy of that nation even for their virtues. In every age she has marched before the enemies of our country, proclaiming peace when there was no peace, and lulling its defenders into fatal security, whilst the iron hand of despotism was aiming a death blow at its liberties. Already our infant Republic has felt her withering influence. Already has she involved us in a war, which nearly cost us our existence. Let us learn wisdom from experience, and forever banish this fiend [FOREIGN INFLUENCE] from our society.
Such were the views entertained by Mr. Buchanan, in 1815, in regard to an evil, to banish which the American party are now struggling, and which he regarded as dangerous to the safety of the Republic, even at that early day. The present Democratic party regard "Foreign Influence," as wielded through the ballot-box and brought to bear upon the affairs of the country, a power, not to be crushed out, but to be sought, courted and flattered. Unless Mr. Buchanan's sentiments have undergone a radical change, we don't well see how the "foreigners" and their peculiar friends will be able to swallow him, although they heretofore have demonstrated their capacity to gulp down anything which expediency or success of the "party" might seem to require. But Mr. Buchanan has spent several of his latter years amid the blandishments and luxuries of the Court of St. James, and as he well knows that the party whose nominee he expects to be, would be powerless without the foreign element, it is possible that he now views the subject thro different glasses, and what was formerly a great evil, may now be regarded, notwithstanding the multiplied proofs to the contrary, as a positive blessing. In that event it will make no sort of difference—to the "party"—what he said or wrote a few years ago upon this or any other subject. Still old documents are sometimes embarrassing.