THE Democratic party, so-called, have several charges which they make against the Republican party. They give us a variety of reasons why the Republican party should no longer be entrusted with the control of this country. Among other reasons they say that the Republican party during the war was guilty of arresting citizens without due process of law--that we arrested Democrats and put them in jail without indictment, in Lincoln bastiles, without making an affidavit before a Justice of the Peace--that on some occasions we suspended the writ of _habeas corpus_, that we put some Democrats in jail without their being indicted. I am sorry we did not put more. I admit we arrested some of them without an affidavit filed before a Justice of the Peace. I sincerely regret that we did not arrest more. I admit that for a few hours on one or two occasions we interfered with the freedom of the press; I sincerely regret that the Government allowed a sheet to exist that did not talk on the side of this Government. I admit that we did all these things. It is only proper and fair that we should answer these charges. Unless the Republican party can show that they did these things either according to the strict letter of law, according to the highest precedent, or from the necessity of the case, then we must admit that our party did wrong. You know as well as I that every Democratic orator talks about the fathers, about Washington and Jackson, Madison, Jefferson, and many others; they tell us about the good old times when politicians were pure, when you could get justice in the courts, when Congress was honest, when the political parties differed, and differed kindly and honestly; and they are shedding crocodile tears day after day--praying that the good old honest times might return again. They tell you that the members of this radical party are nothing like the men of the Revolution. Let us see. I lay this down as a proposition, that we had a right to do anything to preserve this Government that our fathers had a right to do to found it. If they had a right to put Tories in jail, to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_, and on some occasions _corpus_, in order to found this Government, we had a right to put rebels and Democrats in jail and to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ in order to preserve the Government they thus formed. If they had a right to interfere with the freedom of the press in order that liberty might be planted upon this soil, we had a right to do the same thing to prevent the tree from being destroyed. In a word, we had a right to do anything to preserve this Government which they had a right to do to found it.