Juniata Sentinel

THE APPLICATIONS FOR LICENSE

A number of hotel-keepers in this county have filed petitions for license in the Prothonotary's office, from whence they no doubt in due time will be presented to the Court. We are not acquainted with the line of action that the hotel keepers intend to pursue. We do not know why it is that they ask that the voice of the majority of the people of this county, as expressed at the polls in March on the question of Local Option, be set aside. We do not know that there was any informality in the election on the part of those who favored Local Option. Should it, however, so appear, by some conjuring or hair-splitting process not now visible, it should by no means invalidate the legality of the decision, for the spirit, of the action of the people was unmistakably against license. The spirit of the act is of more importance than the letter. The spirit or inclination of the people of this county was expressed against license in a majority of nearly eight hundred. It would require the showing of a gross and willful violation of the law to induce a Court of Justice to set aside and declare null and void so emphatic an endorsement of the Local Option law.

There was no clause in the Constitution of the United States that declared that a human being should be classed as property, such as horses, sheep and cattle: yet the spirit of the institution of slavery in the South insisted upon the recognition of man as property, and the Supreme Court, controlled by the inhuman spirit that pervaded Southern society, decided a slave to be property, just as are horses and cattle. And because the United States Constitution declared that the citizens of all the States had the common right to traffic in the common territory of the United States in any and all kinds of property. slavery existed there and could be trafficked in. That was a hair-splitting business in the interest of inhumanity. It was not the clear and emphatic letter of the fundamental law that moved the Court : it was the spirit of the institution of slavery that governed the decision.

Both the spirit and the action of the people of this county as expressed at the polls favor Local Option, and to set aside and violate their verdict because the vote of the county had not been counted in a convention of return judges. when there was no such requirement by law, would be a more infamous decision than was the Dred Scott decision.

The Republican party can afford to repudiate its dishonest followers. The officials that wears its garments must toe the mark of honesty or take a back seat. The great body of the American people were never more in earnest on this point than now. The grade of statesmen that come into power hereafter will be a trifle higher than in the past. The Forty second Congress has had its full share of honest and noble men but it has also had a class that failed to live up to the true standard of Republican morality.

The people weighed these men, found them wanting. The lessons which have lately been taught by the press of the country will not be lost on the men who come fresh from the people. Recent investigations have done good in more ways than one. They have brought our true men to the surface, and opened the eyes of the people to the necessity of sending as representatives the very best men that can be produced.

The Republican party is not immaculate. It has in its ranks men who disgrace their manhood by acts which no Republican can justify. But we have enough sterling honesty left to fill all the offices in the land, and to keep them filled for some years to come, without risking a choice from among the army of Democrats who are at present tendering their "honest services" to Uncle Sam.

-Washington Republic.