The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
have devoted all its policy to build up, and now, confronted with it,
can find no remedy but in the abolishment of morals and conscience
altogether.
The Democratic Party, like the distinguished ancestor of Jonathan
Wild, has been impartially on both sides of every question of
domestic policy which has arisen since it came into political
existence. It has been _pro_ and _con_ in regard to a Navy, a
National Bank, Internal Improvements, Protection, Hard Money, and
Missouri Compromise. Its leading doctrine was State Rights; its whole
course of action, culminating in the Dred Scott decision, has been
in the direction of Centralization. During all these changes, it has
contrived to have the Constitution always on its side by the simple
application of Swift's axiom, "Orthodoxy is _my_ doxy, Heterodoxy is
_thy_ doxy," though it has had as many doxies as Cowley. Sometimes
it has even had two at once, as in refusing to the iron of
Pennsylvania the protection it gave to the sugar of Louisiana.
Pennsylvania avenged herself by the fatal gift of Mr. Buchanan.
There is one exception to the amiable impartiality of the party,--it
has been always and energetically pro-slavery. In this respect
Mr. Cushing has the advantage of it, for he has been on both sides
of the Slavery question also. It must be granted, however, that his
lapse into _Negrophilism_ was but a momentary weakness, and that
without it the Whig Party would have lost the advantage of his
character, and the lesson of his desertion, in Congress. He is said
to be master of several tongues, and it is therefore quite natural
that he should have held a different language at different times on
many different questions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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