The Columbian

The Constitutional Convention.

So far indications at Harrisburg justify the suspicion that the Radicals intend to defeat the call for a convention. Their plan seems to be to insist upon a bill framed by themselves and entirely in their interest, knowing that such a bill will (as it ought to) be rejected by the Senate. By this plan they hope to reach the end of the session and adjourn without making the call. This is based upon the hope of getting control of the Senate next fall, and then they would have things all their own way. Under such a condition, of course they desire no such restraints as a revised Constitution would certainly impose: they want to go on in the "same old way," and continue to take all the advantages of special legislation, which a long experience has demonstrated, however injurious to the people at large, to be highly profitable to the representatives of the party in power.

Again, they hope in this way to force upon the Democrats the odium of defeating the measure, and then make the welkin ring next fall with peal after peal from the stump about their own honesty and dishonesty of others. This game is so evident that no Democrat will be deceived by it, and it is to be hoped that members of their own party will not be gulled by it to any considerable extent. The convention ought to be called upon a fair basis, and any bill manifestly in the interest of one party and against the other, covers a contemplated fraud in one shape or another.—Clinton Democrat.