J?(oQ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 011 895 840 8 ./^ Hollinger P H8.5 Mill Run F3-1 955 [ E 440 .S8 Copy 1 ! ^S A w V i ) i \j 4 ) . 1 \ i ) i \ * ) i \ t ) ( \ t ) r \ ) \ } t ( ) i ) ( \ i ) i u t ) i V f { fr i ) r ° vj 8 P PLATFORM FOR ALL PARTIES. HY AUSTRO- BOB B A. L I S . * Quid est Republica nisi Res Populi ? Cicero, Be Repub. What is the Commonweal but the People's Weal? A.— B. * BALTIMORE: J. P. DES FORGES 1860. f .^. - / \ ll A PLATFOEM ? FOR ALL PARTIES BT ATJSTRO-BOBEALIS. C > / X Quid est Rcspublica nisi Res Populi? • Ciceho, De Repub. What is the Commonweal but the People's Weal? A.— B. BALTIMORE: J. P. DES FORGES. 1860. .s * WILL YOU MANTAIN AND SET FORWARD, AS MUCH AS LIETH IN YOU, QUIETNESS, PEACE, AND LOVE, AMONG ALL CHRISTIAN PEOPLE, AND ESPECIALLY AMONG THEM THAT ARE OR SHALL BE COMMITTED TO YOUR CHARGE? I WILL SO DO, THE LORD BEING MY HELPER. Form and Maimer of Ordering Priests. PRELIMINARY. It will be inferred from the quotation on the back of the title page that the writer is a clergyman ; a Clerical Platform, therefore, may not be out of place to begin with. 1. A clergyman is a citizen, and, as such, has the same rights as other citizens, though it may not always be advisable to exercise them. 2. It is proper for a clergyman to petition Congress, or the State Legislature, in his clerical capacity, respecting what concerns him purely in that capacity. Thus, clergymen in Maryland petitioned the Legislature for a modification of a section of the Marriage law, which bore hard on them as the authorized, and, in that State, the sole authorized solemnizers of the marriage rite. 3. It is not proper for a clergyman to petition Congress, or the State Legislature, in his clerical capacity, respecting what concerns him only as a citizen. The "three thousand New England clergymen" might have petitioned Congress in their capacity of citizens, and along with their fellow-citizens, though, even then, it might have been a fair question for them whether they would not thereby be lessening their influence as clergymen. 4. A clergyman has no right to prostitute the pulpit to the purposes of the ros- trum or the stump. 5. If, as a citizen, he has any thing to say to his fellow-citizens, that is worth saying, and can find time to say it without neglecting other duties, there is no reason why he should not say it. Whether what follows is worth saying must be left to others to determine. Catonsville, Md. E. J. S. PLATFORM. Every age has its characteristic. The present is the age of Plat- forms. Each new party inaugurates itself upon a new one, and each old party, every four years, trundles out the old one ; takes out, here and there, a rotten or a broken plank, and puts a new one in its place, sometimes of hard oak, sometimes of soft pine— very soft. We are now in the latter half of the eighteenth lustre of the Repub- lic, and the platform-building season is again upon us. Already the sound of the saw and the hammer may be heard, and ere long master- builder, journeyman, and prentice, will be hard at work, from Maine to California. The truth is, this platform-building is getting to be an expensive lux- ury. Can there not be found some economical succedaneum, — a pe- rennial platform, in place of the quadrennial. Thomas, Richard, and Henry build platforms. Why should I be the only modest man in the community? I will build one, too. My platform shall consist of four planks, a Naturalization plank, a Territorial plank, a Presidential plank, and an Administrative plank. These four planks fairly and squarely put together into a platform, and the people fairly and squarely on it, and Demos will no longer be the pack-horse of peculating politicians. 1. The NatAiralization Plank. — Wliat the chief captain said to St. Paul, our naturalized fellow-citizens may say each of himself: " With a great sum obtained I this freedom;" not, however, as in the chief captain's case, with a great sum of money, but at the incomparably greater cost of cutting loose from old associations, of sundering the ties of kindred and country, of undergoing the hardships and perils of the middle passage, and of feeling one's self, for a time at least, a stranger in a strange land. Surely they who have gone through all this to secure to themselves what is ours by birthright, should be sub- jected to no unnecessary restrictions, and, above all, to no invidious distinctions. Grive them their political regeneration, the new-birth of American citizenship, as the Church gives those who come to her from the world the new-birth of the kingdom of grace, the citizenship of 6 Heaven, as the Apostle calls it,* and the old allegiance will he cast off, old habits of thought and feeling outgrown, old associations for- gotten, and the new-born heir of freedom will grow up steadily into "the measure of the fullness of the stature" of the "perfect man." If there are evils connected with our present system of naturalization, let them be got rid of, but not at the expense of introducing greater evils in their place. One evil there undoubtedly is, — that of naturalizing large numbers on the eve of an exciting election, the politicians paying the fee, and then marching the new citizen to the polls to vote as they may direct. A slight change in the naturalization laws, and one to which, it seems to me, no one, whether native or foreign born, can fairly object, would do away, practically, with nine-tenths of the evil. Nearly all the elections, on the eve of which these wholesale naturalizations take place, are held in the autumn. Let, then, the law be altered so as to allow the granting of naturalization papers only in the winter and spring, and perhaps a part of the summer, say from the first of Decem- ber to the first of July, with a proviso that those whose term of proba- tion expired between the first of July and the first of December might be naturalized the preceding June. Such is the alteration I propose. Adopt it and the term of probation instead of being extended, may be safely reduced to a single year, for none will apply for naturalization but such as value the privilege enough to pay the fee themselves, and this will be a practical limiting of it to the intelligent, the industrious, the deserving. And now, that the naturalized vote is so nearly equally divided be- tween the two great political parties, is the time to make the alteration. May I not, then, confidently appeal to every member of Congress to plant himself, at once, on this plank of my platform. 2. The Territorial Plank. — We hear a great deal about "Popular Sovereignty," "Congressional Intervention," and this, that, and the other; and men's minds have been not a little mystified on the subject. And yet it is, after all, a very simple one. Congress has the power to "exercise exclusive legislation" over the Territories, whether you derive that power from the 3d section of the 4th article, or the 2d Bection of the 2d article. But the power of exclusive legislation does not imply sovereignty. Congress is not sovereign. The States are the sovereign, exercising their sovereignty through the Constitution, or by ♦Phil. 3:20. Gr. UoXi'rt vptt. an alteration thereof with the concurrence of the Legislatures, or con- ventions of three-fourths of them. Congress can legislate for a Terri- tory within the limits of the Constitution ; no other body can legislate for it at all, except as the agent, or locum tenens, of Congress; and then only within the same limits. For surely what Congress cannot do, tliat the Territorial Legislature, which is its creature, cannot do, either. We are told, indeed, by Judge Douglas, and the declaration is en- dorsed by "A Southern Citizen," that "it is the right and duty of Congress to organize the people of the Territories into political com- munities," and that, when so organized, they have " the inherent right of self-government," derived to them, however, not by Congress, but by the 10th article of the Amendments to the Constitution. His words are, "'Inasmuch as the right to govern the people of the Territories, in relation to their internal polity, is not delegated to Congress, it neces- sarily follows that it is 'reserved to the people' until they become a State, and from that period to the new State, in the same manner as to the other States respectively." And again, "Those (powers) which are municipal and domestic in their character, are 'reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,' — 'to the States' in respect to all of their inhabitants, and ' to the people ' of the Territories prior to their admission as States." That is to say, the phrase " to the people," had reference to the Territories, and not to the States. If this be so, the language of the article shows a sad falling off from that of the original Constitution, which is remarkable for its perspicuity and pre- cision. To convey the meaning here ascribed to it, it should have read, " are reserved to the States respectively or to the several Territories" Let us see if we cannot find a more natural interpretation. " The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to" the constituted authori- ties of "the States respectively, or to the people," who created those constituted authorities, conferring on them certain powers, and reserv- ing to themselves certain other powers, either to be held in abeyance, or to be exercised by themselves in propriis personis. This is the natural and obvious interpretation. The 10th article refers to the people of the States alone ; had it been intended to refer to the Terri- tories it would have specified them by that designation. Our fathers weighed their words and measured their language. But even on Judge Douglas's own showing, his interpretation is not the true one. "Every 'right of property, private relation, condition or status, lawfully existing' in this country," says he, "must of neces- sity he a rightful subject of legislation by some legislative body. Where does this sovereign power of legislation for the Territories reside ? It must be in one of two places — either in Congress or in the Territories. It can be nowhere else, and must exist somewhere." Again, "The people of the Territories cannot exercise the right of self-government until Congress shall have determined that they have people enough to constitute a political community, that they are ca- pable of self-government, and may be safely intrusted with legislative power." Put that and that together, and it follows clearly that Congress has the same "power of legislation for the Territories" before the passage of the "organic act" that the Territorial Legislature has after it; in other words, the same power of. legislation as for the District of Colum- bia; that is to say, the power "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever," subject only to the limitations of the Constitution. Such is the power of Congress in the premises. How it shall exer- cise that power, — whether solely by enactments of its own, or also by creating a Territorial Legislature, and if the latter, to what extent it shall confer the legislative power on such Legislature, are questions to be determined on altogether different grounds. The whole genius and spirit of our institutions is on the side of local self-government to the greatest extent compatible with "the general welfare." What that extent is, must be determined in each particular instance by the exigencies of the case. lY.xticillv. there would be no difficulty, but for one disturbing cle- ment. Of course, I refer to slavery — the great bone of contention between North and South ; and none the less so, now that all the meat has been so nearly gnawed off from it; no dog likes to have even the bare bone taken nut of his mouth. We are often told that the Fathers of the Republic had no liking for slavery, and that though they tolerated it as a temporary evil, they looked confidently to its early extinction by the action of the several State Legislatures. Whether that be so or not, — and their express permission of the foreign slave trade to the States then existing does not look much like it, — they certainly did not look to a warring upon the institution by the Northern States. On the contrary, they looked to the cultivation of a spirit of brotherly love among the several mem- 9 bers of the confederacy. How little the event has answered their ex- pectation I need not say. The North is arrayed against the South, and the South against the North, and crimination and recrimination are the order of the day. It was not always so. For the first thirty years, Territories were organized, and States admitted into the Union, without any restriction as to slavery except such as existed prior to the adoption of the Consti- tution. In this way, during that period, no less than five slave States were added to the Union. But when, in 1819, Missouri, which seven years before had been organized as a slave Territory by the deliberate act of Congress, (See Benton's Debates, vol vi, p. 431,) and had grown up as such under the sanction of that body, came, with a Con- stitution the natural and appropriate, and, indeed, necessary result of such a State of society, knocking for admission into the Union, the door was shut — say rather, slammed — in- her face ; and not till the fol- lowing session, and then at the expense to the South of the so-called Missouri Compromise, did she obtain admittance. Here was a deliberate violation of plighted faith. He who know- ingly raises expectations — and this is as true of States as of individuals — is bound in honor to fulfil them. In this case, Congress practically said to Missouri : While you were a Territory we had, in our opinion, entire control over you, and there/ore we let you do as you pleased ; but now you are about to become a State, and we shall have no control over you, and there/ore we loont let you do as you please. Was ever such reasoning before ? What business was it to Congress what insti- tutions the sovereign State of Missouri had, so they were "Republi- can," within the meaning of the Constitution? The North having thus sown the wind, has, for the last five years, been reaping the whirlwind. Had she kept to her plighted faith, there would have been no Missouri Compromise to repeal, and the country would have been spared all this agitation, and the ill blood consequent upon it. Kansas would have filled up slowly but surely, with Northern men, and Northern institutions, and would, ere this, have taken her place among the free States of the Union, instead of being still kept waiting, by a sort of poetic justice, as Missouri was kept waiting, forty years ago. A higher law than man's determines the question of slavery or no slavery, and it is vain to fight against it. Under its operation the Indian Territory belongs to slavery; so do New Mexico and Arizona, — together 359,000 square miles. All the rest, 1,203,000 in 10 all, is freedom's ; so declared to be by Senator Chesnut in his speech at Camden, S. C, a few weeks since. (See K. T. Times, Oct. 3.) Add to these the number of square miles of the free States and the slave States, respectively, and you have half a million more for freedom than for slavery; and even if you put Utah with the South, (where it does not belong, and cannot be made to belong,) you but strike an even balance between the two. Why should not the North be satisfied with this? Why should she insist on the lion's share? She must know she cannot get it while the South retains a particle of self-respect. Too long, already, has she been enacting the part of the North Wind against the traveller's cloak, and with a similar result; let her now try the effect of a little of the genial sunshine of brotherly love. My word for it, she will gain more by it than by continuing her present course till doomsday. What is the use of all this agitation ? Has it extended the area of freedom ? Has it narrowed that of slavery? Can it do it? Is it not, then, worse than idle? And can a Christian man have any thing to do with it? Suppose the system of slavery as bad as represented, why should we by our meddling make it worse ? I speak as a North- ern man, Northern born. And we shall make it worse ? We have made it worse already. God sees all the evils of slavery more clearly than we see them ; and yet he bears with it. Patiens quia JEternus, says St. Augustine. Why should not man, the heir of immortality, be patient too? Leave to the brawling infidel, who "struts his little hour on life's brief stage," a life, " solitary, nasty, and short,"— to fret and fume over temporary, individual, evils, that are slowly, but surely, working out the regeneration and salvation of a race. Slavery has not brought the American negro dmtm to his present level, as so many at the North seem to think. If it had, no words of condemnation would be too strong for it; it would deserve, as it would receive, the execration not only of every Christian, but of every honor- able and high-minded man. On the contrary, it lias brought him vp to his present level from the deepest degradation, and is still elevating him with each successive generation. It has made him all he is, and all he hopes for, in this life, and in the life to come. This is its one suffi- cient justification before God and man. Certainly Freedom cannot show such justification yd, in Ilayti or in Jamaica; and till it does, we may be well content to leave things as they are. In this way only shall we be doing as we would be done by. The Constitution puts two restrictions upon slavery, and only two, and on the well-known prin- 11 ciple of legal interpretation, Expressio unius est exclusio alter ins — a principle recognized by implication (since exceptio prohat rcgulam) in the ninth article of Amendments — Congress has no right to add a third. The restrictions are found in article 1, section 2, paragraph 3, which, in determining the basis of representation, counts five slaves equal to but three freemen, and section 9, paragraph 1, which confers on Con- gress the power to prohibit the foreign slave-trade, after a certain time — a power which that body exercised at the earliest moment. The prohibition is still on the statute-book, and there it will remain. We hear, indeed, a great deal of talk about repealing it, but it is nothing but talk ; the interests of the five slave States farthest north, and of the majority of slave owners in the other ten, are a guarantee of its per- petuity. As to the allegation that the prohibition is a reflection upon slavery, it is a palpable non sequitur ; for, in the first place, it may be enacted from considerations of expediency; and, in the second place, the right to keep men in slavery does not imply the right to reduce them to that condition. I have no right to shut a sane man up in a madhouse till, by brooding over his wrongs, he becomes really mad ; (this is not an imaginary case;) but when he has become mad, even though it be by my doing, I have a perfect right to keep him shut up. I use this comparison not as indicating the effect of slavery on the negro, for it does not do that, but to illustrate the single point that the right to keep a man in a certain state or condition does not argue the right to reduce him to that state or condition. Equally idle is it to make the repeal of the prohibition a point of honor. If the honor of the South was not safe in the hands of the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, and the Butlers, who subscribed their names to the Constitution in witness that it was "done in convention, by the unanimous consent of the States present," among which was every Southern State, it will hardly be safer in the hands of its self -constitu- ted guardians of the present day. But there is another point of view from which this subject may be regarded. At present, the high price of the negro is his protection; worth more to him as such than all the provisions of the statute-book. It secures to him kind treatment and consequent elevation, physical and moral, in the scale of being. But bring in a horde of barbarians and you rapidly deteriorate him, not only by that evil communication which corrupts good manners, but by lowering his market value, and thereby making it the interest of his master to use him solely as a means to an 12 end, as the Cuban master is using his negroes at the present moment. Now, no man has a right thus to use his fellow man ; and no legisla- tive body has a right to tempt him thus to use him. This is the teach- ing not merely of Christianity, but of the commonest morality.* Let us hear no more, then, of this talk about reopening the slave- trade. If it is meant in earnest, it is very foolish, for there is not the slightest chance of success; if it is meant in joke, to goad the anti-sla- very feeling of the North, it is very foolish, none the less, and very wicked into the bargain. The other restriction, which counts but three-fifths of the slaves in determining the ratio of representation, is very commonly looked upon at the North as not a restriction of the power slavery, but an enlarge- ment. And yet it is a restriction, as is clear from the fact that if the South were to abolish slavery, she would thereby add to her basis of representation more than a million and a half, and that, too, without the slightest extension of the right of suffrage. She has now five rep- resentatives in Congress on the basis of her free negro population ; if she were to enslave that population, as she is talking of doing in some of the States, she would have but three. If it be said that the slaves ought not to be counted at all, because they are not citizens, I answer that the North has now, and has had for the last ten years, and will have for a long time to come, a floating popu- lation of some three millions of unnaturalized foreigners, every one of whom counts, and not merely three-fifths; and yet not one of them is a citizen or has a vote, except in some of the Western States, and, then, against the spirit, if not the letter of the Constitution. These are the only restrictions on slavery in the Constitution, and on the principle already cited, Fxjircssio unius, &c, which is the prin- ciple of common sense, as well as law, Congress has no right to ad ll 11 11 11 7 11 7 7 1 ■i 4 30 30 30 50 | 15 37 |)02 1 18 GO 15 | 102 34 18 50 102 19 DEMOCRATIC TICKET. X Y Z States. 1st. 2d. 1 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 31 33 31 31 Ky., Tenn., Mo 33 33 12 12 10 12 10 10 13 13 13 3 3 3 64 25 13 102 22 34 46 102 16 43 43 102 Here, the aggregate vote is equally divided between three tickets. X has the highest vote as first choice, and is President. L is first in the line of succession, and A second. Thus the three highest candi- dates are divided among the three tickets. Two might be on the same ticket, but all three could not. TABLE II. WHIG TICKET A B C States. 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3d. Total N. Y., Ky., La Del Ohio 53 26 53 53 26 26 Me.,'Mass.R.i., Ct. 31 31 10 31 10 10 8 8 8 25 "N H TVnn Fla 25 25 79 39 35 153 41 "78 34 153 33 36 84 153 DEMOCRATIC TICKET. X Y Z States. 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3d. Total p 27 52 27 27 N. J., Tex., Ind., 111., Mich., Iowa, 52 52 23 23 48 23 Ga. Miss. Ala. Ark. 48 48 3 3 3 79 26 48 153 71 27 55 153 3 100 50 153 20 Here the aggregate vote is equally divided between the two tickets. The vote as first choice also is equally divided between A and X, but A has the highest number as second choice, and is President. X is first in the line of succession, and Y second. TABLE III. WHIG TICKET. A B c States. 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3,1. Total N. Y., N. C, La., Tonn Ky .. 75 31 "75 1 "> Maryland, Ohio Maine, Mass., R. I., 31 31 31 31 10 31 10 10 106 31 10 147 41 75 31 1-17 41 106 147 DEMOCRATIC TICKET. X Y Z States. 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3d. ITotaJ 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 27 48 27 27 N..I. In.]. 111. Mich 18 48 23 .V! 23 Ga. Mi: Ala. Tex.. Ark.jfris.Mo.Cal. [•'In < frcaoD 52 6 6 G :; 3 55 3 75 2!) 75 30 150 9 loo 50 1 59 II.tc the entire Democratic tiokel ia elected. X and Y have an equal number of rotes aa first choice, bul Y has the Largest :i^ Becond, and i- therefore President. X is first in the line of succession and Z second. Had Pennsylvania given her 27 votes i<> \Y. as third choice, 'A would have been defeated, ami A, the highest as first choice on the Whig ticket, would lia\< liri'ii second in the line of succession. 21 TABLE IT. DEMOCRATIC TICKET. X Y Z States. 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3d. Total 1st. 2d. 3d. Tota\ 17 36 17 17 Oregon, Penn. Fla. 36 36 Ga. Ark. Ind. Wis. Cal 36 36 17 36 Ala., S. C 17 17 N. J., Del., Miss.... 17 17 17 36 Va. 111. Mich. Iowa. 36 36 53 53 53 159 53 53 53 159 53 53 53 159 Here the Whig ticket remaining as in the preceding table, the De- mocratic ticket is elected; but the vote in the aggregate, and also as first and second, and of course, therefore, as third choice, is equally divided among the three candidates. The vote by States, also, as first choice, is equally divided among the three, each having seven States; but, as second choice X has eight States, Y seven, and Z six. X is, therefore, President, and Y is first in the line of succession, and Z second. JOHN P. DES FORGES, f xmin, l§nl&dhx, 3Mmn f -A.1ST3D DEALER I3ST COINS, MEDALS, «fco. 12 LIG-HT STREET, Opposite Fountain Hotel, (T& (L IT ri %® I, BLANK BOOKS Ruled and Bound to any Pattern. FOREIGN BOOKS IMPORTED TO ORDER. I want and will give Twenty-Five Cents each for good impressions of UNITED STATES CENTS of 1793, 1799, 1804; /also HALF CENTS of 1793, 1796, 1799, 1802, 1831, 1836, 1840 to 1848, 1^2. I also want Washington Cents of 1791 and 1792. Colonial Coppers, Medals and Metallic Store Cards. Persons sending me Coins from a distance will have the value remitted by return of Mail. J. P. DES FORGES, IS LIGHT STEEET, OPPOSITE FOUNTAIN HOTEL, ©AffflSH®iB!i<» r LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 011 895 840 8 s , ANTIQUARIAN BOOK ST R JOHN P. p£S FORGES, f rintar, laokMln, Stationer, ! AisnD oe^vlek, ir