Now, my friend (the reader), you can begin to see, can you not, why it is that the Democratic party, notwithstanding all its sins, has still been kept alive? But yet there is one more item to be added to account for its continued existence: namely, that it is not only supplied with recruits from Europe, but with money as well. We have heretofore shown from official sources how many hundreds of thousands of dollars have been, and are constantly being sent from Europe to this country to "propagate" the Catholic faith--which is, indeed, but another name and another way of propagating the Democratic party--and but for the extreme secrecy of their movements, we might show just as plainly that other hundreds of thousands are sent here at every Presidential election by European capitalists, European manufacturers, and European sovereigns, with a view to influence our elections. Bribery at elections being made a misdemeanor in nearly all the States, movements of this character have to be conducted with extreme secrecy; but that the thing has been done for the past forty years (ever since the inauguration of the protective system by Henry Clay), and is still being done, there is not a shadow of doubt; nor is there a doubt that this is another one of the reasons why the Democratic party is kept alive. A single Hartford convention killed the Federal party; a single set of pro-slavery resolutions, adopted by a National convention, killed the Whig party; and the part which the Democratic party took in the late rebellion would have killed it so effectually that no resurrection could have ever reached it, but for the support it has had, and still has, from European powers, through emigration and through the Catholic Church, and with the once avowed, and now no less steadily held, object of overthrowing our representative form of government, and of destroying the liberty of our press. Thus, my friend (the reader), your second query is answered beyond, as we think, all possibility of successful contradiction. [Illustration: 0323] CHAPTER XX. -- III.--FROM ALL YOUR STUDY OF HISTORY, WHAT DEDUCTIONS DO YOU DRAW AS TO THE FINAL DECLINE AND FALL, IF SUCH A THING IS EVER TO BE, OF THIS REPUBLIC? |TO the casual reader, the relationship that this question bears to "Secrets of the Late Rebellion, now Revealed for the First Time," may seem very obscure, but to our mind, that sees the end from the beginning, the relationship seems very close, as our readers will also see, we think, before we close the answer.