which the meeting had convened was to consider "THE PRESENT State of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN OHIO, AND ITS DUTY."

After some preliminary remarks, explanatory of the object of the meeting, and the reasons why it was proper and expedient thus early to discuss before the people the great question which must make up the chief issue in the campaign of 1856, and to organize preparatory thereto, Mr. VALLANDIGHAM said that he proposed as the text or "rubric " of what he had to say to-night, the following inquiries: WHY HAS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUFFERED DEFEAT IN OHIO? WHY IS IT SO GREATLY DISORGANIZED? WHAT WILL RESTORE IT TO SOUND DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE, AND, THEREFORE, TO POWER AND USEFULNESS?

THESE, Mr. President, are grave questions. I propose to answer them plainly-boldly-not as a partisan, but as a patriot; and for the opinions which I shall this night avow, I alone am responsible. I speak not to please, but to instruct, to warn, to arouse, and, if it be not presumption, to save, while to be saved is yet possible. The time for plain Anglo-Saxon out-speaking is come. Let us hear no more the lullaby of peace, when there is no peace; but rather the sharp clang of the trumpet stirring to battle; at least, the alarm bell in the night, when the house is on fire over our heads. Or, better still, give us warning while the incendiary is yet stealing, "with whispering and most guilty diligence," and flaming torch, toward our dwelling, that we may be ready and armed against his approach.

First, then: The Democratic party of Ohio suffered defeat because it became disorganized; and it was disorganized because it held not, in all things, to sound doctrine, vigorous discipline, and to true and good men. It began to tamper with heresy and with unsound men— to look after policy, falsely so called, and forget sometimes the TRUE and HONEST; not mindful, with Jackson, that the right is always expedient at least, that the wrong never is; and that an invigorating defeat is ever better than a triumph which leaves the victor weaker than the conquered. This is a law of nature, gentlemen, and we may claim no immunity from punishment for its infraction. I speak of the Democratic party of Ohio, because we are our own masters, and have a work of our own to perform. But the evil, in part, lies outside the State. It infects the whole party of the Union, as such. It ascends into high places, and sits down hard by the throne. But I affect the wise caution of Sallust, remembering that concerning Carthage it is better to be silent, than speak too little. Yet we, as members, must partake of the weakness and enervation of other parts of the system; and atrophy is quite as fatal, though it may not be so speedy, as corruption and gangrene.

The inquiries, gentlemen, which I have proposed, assume the truth of the facts which they imply. Are they not true? That we

have been defeated, is now become history. But defeat did not disorganize us. Had not discipline first been lost, we could not have been overpowered. I know, indeed, that some have affirmed that we, too, are an effete party, ready to be dissolved and pass away. It is not so. Dissolution and disorganization are wholly different things. The Democratic party is not a thing of shreds and patches, organized for a transient purpose, and thrown hap-hazard together, in undistinguishable mass, without form, consistency, or proportion, by some sudden and temporary pressure, and passing away with the occasion which gave it being; or catching, for a renewed, but yet more ephemeral existence, at each flitting exigency, as it arises in the State; molding itself to the form of every popular humor, and seeking to fill its sails with every new wind of doctrine, as it passes, either in zephyr or tempest, over the waves of public caprice-born and dying with the breath which made it. No, sir. The Democratic party is founded upon PRINCIPLES which never die: hence it is itself immortal. It may alter its forms; it must change its measures-for, as in principle it is essentially conservative, so in policy it is the party of true progress—its individual members and its leading spirits, its representative men, can not remain the same. But wherever there is a people wholly or partially free, there will be a Democratic party more or less developed and organized. But no party, gentlemen, is at all times equally pure and true to principle and its mission. And whenever the Democratic party forgets these, it loses its cementing and power-bestowing element; it waxes weak, is disorganized, is defeated-till, purging itself of its impurities, and falling back and rallying within its impregnable intrenchments of original and eternal principles, it returns, like "eagle lately bathed,” with irresistible might and majesty, to the conflict, full of hope, and confident in victory. Sir, it is this recuperative power-this vis medicatrix-which distinguishes the Democratic party from every other; and it owes this wholly to its conservative element, FIXED POLITICAL PRINCIPLES. I say political principles-principles dealing peculiarly with government-because it is a POLITICAL party, and mus be judged according to its nature and constitution. Recognizing, in their fullest extent, the imperative obligations of personal religion and morality upon its members, and also that, in its aggregate keing, it dare not violate the principles of either, it is yet neither a Church nor a lyceum. It is no part of its mission to set itself up as an expounder of ethical or divine truth. Still less is it a mer philanthropic or eleemosynary institution. All these are great and noble, each within its peculiar province, but they form no part of the immediate business and end of the Democratic party. And it is because that party sometimes will forget that it is the first and highes duty of its mission to be the depositary of immutable political principles, and steps aside after the dreams and visions of a false and anatical progress-sometimes political, commonly philanthropic or moral-that it ceases to be powerful and victorious; for God has ordained that truth shall ever, in the end, be vindicated, and error chastised.

Forgetting the true province of a political party, the Democracy of France and Germany has always failed, and ever must fail. It aims at too much. It invokes government to regenerate man, and set him free from the taint and the evils of sin and suffering; it seeks to control the domestic, social, individual, moral, and spiritual relations of man; it ignores or usurps the place of the fireside, the Church, and the lyceum: and, emulating the folly of Icarus, and spreading its wings for too lofty a flight into upper air, it has melted like wax before the sun. Indirectly, indeed, government will always, sir, affect more or less all these relations for good or evil. But departing from its appointed orbit, confusion, not less surely or disastrously, must follow, than from a like departure by the heavenly bodies from their fixed laws of motion. And, indeed, the greater, and by far the gravest part of the errors of Democracy everywhere, are to be traced directly to neglect or infraction of the fundamental principle of its constitution-that man is to be considered and dealt with by government strictly in reference to his relations as a political being.

These reflections, Mr. President, naturally lead me to the first inquiry.

Personal dissension: a turning aside after mere temporary and miscalled expediency; a faith in and following after weak, or uncertain, or selfish, or heretical men; neglect of party tone and discipline as essential to the morale, and hence the success of a party, as of an army, and just as legitimate; these, and the like minor causes of disorganization and defeat, I pass over. They are incident to all parties, and although never to be too lightly estimated, yet rarely occasion lasting or very serious detriment. Commonly, indeed, sir, they are but the diagnostic, or visible development of an evil which lies deeper-just as boils and blotches upon the sur face of the body show that the system is tainted and distemperel within. Neither do I pause, gentlemen, to consider how far the final inauguration of the grand scheme of domestic policy, which the Democratic party so many years struggled for, and the consequent postration and dissolution of the Whig party, have contributed to the loss of vigilance and discipline; since an organization healthy ʼn all other things must soon recover its wonted tone and soundness. Sir, the Democratic party has principle to fall back upon; and it his, too, a trust to execute not less sacred, and almost as difficult, as its first work. It is its business to preserve and keep pure and incorrupt that which it has established. And this, along with the now political questions which, in the world's progress, from day to day spring up, will give us labor enough, and sweat enough, without a wild foray into the province of the benevolent association, tle lyceum, or the Church; to return thence laden, not with the predous things, the incense, and the vessels of silver and gold from off the altar, but the rubbish and the offal-the bigotries, the intoleranc, the hypocrisies, the persecuting spirit, and whatever else of unnixed evil has crept, through corruption, into the outer or the inner courts of the sanctuary.

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I know, indeed, gentlemen, that every political party is more or less directly affected, as by a sort of magnetism, by all great public movements upon any subject; and it is one of the peculiar evils of a democracy, that every question of absorbing, though never so transient interest-moral, social, religious, scientific, no matter what assumes, sooner or later, a political shape and hue, and enters into the election contests and legislation of the country. For many years, nevertheless, sir, questions not strictly political exerted but small influence upon parties in the United States. The memorable controversies which preceded the American Revolution, and which developed and disciplined the great abilities of the giants of those days-founded, indeed, as all must be, upon abstract principles drawn from the nature of man considered in his relation to government-were yet strictly legal and political. The men of that day were not cold metaphysicians, nor wicked or mischievous enthuelse we had been subjects of Great Britain to this day. Practical men, they dealt with the subject as a practical question; and deducing the right of revolution, the right to institute, alter, or abolish government, from the "inalienable rights of man," the American Congress summed up a long catalogue of injuries and usurpations wholly political, as impelling to the separation, and struck out of the original draught of the Declaration of Independence the eloquent, but then mistimed, declamation of Jefferson against the African slave-trade. Sir, it did not occur to even the Hancocks and the Adamses of the New England of that day, that the national sins and immoralities of Great Britain could form the appropriate theme of a great state paper, and supply to a legislative assembly the most potent arguments wherewith to justify and defend before the world a momentous political revolution. Discoveries such as these are, belong to the patriots and wise men-the Sewards, the Sumners, the Hales, and the Chases of a later and more enlightened age.

Our ancestors went to war, indeed, about a preamble and a principle but these were political-the right of the British Parliament to tax America. And they did not stop to inquire whether war was humane and consistent with man's notion of the Gospel of Peace. Their political rights were invaded, and they took up arms to repel the aggression. Nor did they, sir, in the temper and spirit of the pharisaic rabbins and sophisters of '55, ask of each other whether, morally or piously, the citizens of the several Colonies were worthy of fellowship. They were resolved to form a POLITICAL UNION, so as to establish justice and to secure domestic tranquillity, the common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty to themselves and posterity. And the Catholic of Maryland and Huguenot of Carolina, the Puritan Roundhead of New England and the Cavalier of Virginia-the slavery-hating, though sometimes slave-trading, saint of Boston and the slave-holding sinner of Savannah-Washington and Adams, Rutledge and Sherman, Madison and Franklin, Pinckney and Ellsworth, all joined hands in holy brotherhood to ordain a Constitution which, silent about

temperance, forbade religious tests and establishments, and providi for the extradition of fugitive slaves.*

The questions which engaged the great minds of Washington and the men who composed his cabinets were, also, purely political. "Whisky," indeed, sir, played once an important part in the drama, threatening even civil war; but it was as the creature of the taxgatherer, not the theme of the philanthropist or the ecclesiastic. Even the Alien and Sedition Laws of the succeeding administration - renascent now by a sort of Pythagorean metempsychosis, in the form of a secret, oath-bound conspiracy-were defended then solely on political grounds. "The principles of '98," which, at that time, convulsed the country in the struggle for their predominance, were, indeed, abstractions, though of infinite practical value-but they were constitutional and political abstractions. Equally is it true that all the capital measures, in every administration, from '98 to 1828 were of a kindred character, except only the Missouri Question, that "fire-bell in the night" which filled Jefferson with alarm and despair. But this was transient in itself; though it left its slumbering and treacherous ashes to kindle a flame, not many years later, which threatens to consume this Union with fire unquenchable.

But within no period of our history, gentlemen, were so many and such grave political questions the subject of vehement, and sometimes exasperated, discussion, as during the administrations of Jackson and his successor, continuing down, many of them, to 1847. Among these I name Internal Improvements, the Protective System, the Public Lands, Nullification, the Removal of the Indians, the United States Bank, the Removal of the Deposits, Removals from Office, the French Indemnity, the Expunging Resolutions, the Specie Circular, Executive Patronage, the Independent Treasury, Distribution, the Veto Power, and their cognate subjects. Never were greater questions presented. Never was greater intellect or more abundant learning and ingenuity brought into the discussion of any subjects. And never, be it remembered, was the Democratic party so powerful. It was the power and majesty of principle and truth, working out their development through machinery obedient to its constitution and nature. True, Andrew Jackson was then at the head of the party, and his name and his will, moving all things with a nod, were a tower of strength. But an hundred Jacksons could not have upheld a party one day which had been false to its mission.

Within this period, indeed, Anti-masonry rose, flourished, and died; the first, in the United States, of a long line of third parties— the tertium quid of political sophisters-based upon but one tenet, and devoted to a single purpose. But even in this, the professed principle was solely political.

Following the great questions of the Jackson era, came the Annexation of Texas, the Oregon question, and the Mexican War; during,

Both these provisions were carried unanimously, without debate and without vote.-3 Mad. Pap., 1366, 1447, 1456, 1468.