Now, the important question presented is, whether it is safe and wise to trust these amendments for interpretation, construction, and execution to the party which, from first to last, has fiercely opposed them. The safe rule is, if you want a law fairly and faithfully administered, entrust power only to its friends. It will rarely have a fair trial at the hands of its enemies. These amendments are no exception to this rule.
What the country most needs, and what good citizens most desire in regard to these great measures is peace--repose. They wish to be able to rest confidently in the belief that they are to be enforced and obeyed. They do not want them overthrown by revolutionary violence or defeated by fraud. They do not wish them repealed by constitutional amendments, abrogated by judicial construction, nullified by unfriendly legislation, State or National, or left a dead letter by non-action on the part of law-makers or executive officers. Has the time come when the country can afford to trust the Democratic party on these questions? Consider the facts.
The new departure is by no means generally accepted by the Democratic party, and where accepted the conversion is sudden and recent, and against the protest of a large element of sincere and inflexible Democrats.
The only State touching the borders of Ohio which has been reliably Democratic for the last five years is Kentucky. She sends to Congress an undivided Democratic delegation of two senators and nine representatives. At the late election, notwithstanding the heroic efforts of her Republicans under the splendid leadership of General Harlan, the Democratic organs are able to rejoice that they still hold the State by from thirty to forty thousand majority. Where did the Democrats of Kentucky, in their canvass, stand on the new departure? They marched in the old Democratic path. They turned no back somersault to catch Republican votes. On the very day that the Ohio Democracy were wrangling in convention over the bitter dose, Governor Leslie, addressing the Democracy of Lewis county, said: "As to the new amendments, I am out and out opposed to them. I care not who in Indiana, Ohio, or elsewhere may be for them. Those amendments were engrafted upon the constitution of the country, and proclaimed to the country as part and parcel of the constitution by force and by fraud, and not in the legitimate way laid down in the constitution. Ten States of this Union were tied hand and foot, and bayonets were presented to their breasts to make them consent against their will to the passage of these amendments. The procuring of these amendments was a fraud upon this people, and upon the people of the whole United States, and having been thus obtained, I hold that they ought to be repealed. There may be some Democrats who are not for their repeal, but the great body of our party is for it."