The Daily Madisonian

TRUE DEMOCRACY

"If the mechanics are the bone and sinew of the country, why have they not a share of its honors, and a fair portion of its advantages? (Cheers.) Why is the fact of a man being a mechanic a disqualification to him? And yet it is so. (Cheers) There are men who have used us for years—not in reference to their endeavors to benefit the mechanic interests, but in reference to their attempts to elevate themselves by our means, and to get rich by our hard labor. (Cheers.) But what is democracy? Is it in reference to this man, or that, or any other particular man? No! True democracy is the raising of the degraded classes of the human race to the station which God intended they should occupy. (Tremendous cheers)—Mike Walsh's Speech in Tammany Hall."

That the party organizations of the present day have a direct tendency to enslave the People, there can be no doubt. Ultraism, in any form, is intended solely to elevate Demagogues. A County Demagogue will collect a half dozen of his fellows in petty dictation, and in some bar-room have himself adopted as the candidate of the party for a seat in the Legislature. A half dozen counties will pack a convention, composed of similar material, and nominate a candidate for a seat in Congress. A few leading log-rollers in the State Legislature, will in like manner decide who shall represent the State in the United States Senate. And a knot of members of Congress will decide who shall be put in nomination for the Presidency! Thus, out of seventeen millions of freemen in our country, perhaps the selection of rulers, State and Federal, is confided to, or rather arrogated by, some four or five thousand professed politicians!

Is this in accordance with the spirit of Democracy? Is it consistent with the nature of our Republican institutions? Is it justice to the "bone and sinew" of the country? But the worst feature in this incipient oligarchy is the humiliating fact that the farmers, and mechanics, and laborers, forming four-fifths of the voters in the country, are bamboozled and "used" by the "soft-handed" demagogues to accomplish their purposes! The ultra party leaders could not move a step, if the "bone and sinew" were to repudiate them.

And the "bone and sinew" must rise in their might—vindicate their honor, and assert their rights—or they are destined to become the slaves of a self-constituted aristocracy!

The selfish and ambitious ultra leaders, it is true, flatter their constituents. They go among the masses and call them the "dear People," from whom all power emanates, and then beg the power to cut their throats!

A wise Providence has rebuked one party, by taking away the instrument designed by the ultra leaders to effect their selfish and wicked purposes. Another instrument was substituted, in accordance with the provision made by the Republican framers of the Constitution, which the leaders could not wield and use to consummate their direful purposes. The work must be completed by the People, if indeed they intend to show themselves capable of self-government.

If the tide of political profligacy flowing from high places, and sweeping like a pestilence over the best interests of the People, is not rolled back on the heads of its authors—if the usurping tyrants in the halls of legislation, who expend their time and the public money in devising ways and means to elevate some favorite to the Presidency, are not rebuked by the People—then the day is not far distant when our rulers will become Colonnas and Orsinis, and our citizens as the degraded Romans of the fourteenth century!

A tyranny worse than that of George III. preceding the Revolution, will, ere long, be established in our country, if the People do not at once wage a war of extermination against the ultra partisan leaders. Would to God the People could see their machinations as we see them! They would then need no essays to prepare them for the work of revolution and reformation. They would not hesitate a moment! The breath that made, would instantly unmake these tyrants.

We will expose their tyrannical operations. And it can be done in few words. A caucus of Senators and Representatives meet at midnight to make a President. The only use they have for the People is to procure (in obedience to the letter of the Constitution) a formal ratification of their decision in conclave! Well, the advantages and inducements of the several candidates—not their claims and qualifications—are canvassed. They agree upon some one—the fiat goes forth that none but their selection shall be the man. The presses in their different States and districts (in obedience to the orders of the tyrants) make a simultaneous demonstration in favor of the candidate thrust upon the People. The county politicians take up the cry, and have the impudence to tell the People that the prescribed candidate is the favorite of the People (which they were not aware of before,) and call upon all men to rally under the banner of the nation's favorite!

Thus, two or three years prior to the election, a few members of Congress, in midnight caucus assembled, determine who shall be elected President! We ask the People if they will longer submit to this pernicious and insulting dictation?

The time is at hand for them to decide for themselves.

And they will decide for themselves. The farmers and mechanics have it in their power to strip every unworthy public servant in the country of his haughty official plumes. They have too long submitted to insult and injury. Even an aspirant for the Presidency, while addressing his Charlies in Indiana, recently had the hardihood to insult the masses of the People, through their representative, the President of the United States. He said, with all his aristocratic dignity, that a certain Senator never had condescended to enter the house of the President!

Now the President's house is the house of the nation—the People are his fellow-citizens—and we are right sure if Mr. Clay, or any lofty Senator feels it a condescension to enter the Presidential mansion, that the People do not. We have seen the thrifty farmer and honest mechanic, in their neat homespun clothes, sitting with the President at dinner, and feeling just as much at ease as if they were at the board of the hospitable Virginia farmer, when in private life. And we doubt not the President felt himself as highly honored as he would have done if honorable Senators had been sitting at his side.

The People are not too proud to visit the President, if their servants are!