Democratic District Convention

The Democratie Representativa District Convention of the 2d Eepresentative District of Washtenaw County, will be held in Costello Hall, in the village of Dexter, on Thursday, üctober 8th, 1874, for the purpose of nominating a candidate for Representativo in the State Legislature. Each township will be entitled to the same nuniber of delegates that it is entitled to in the county conventiou. By order of the Committee. We give the Argtjs readers this week a lengthy abstract of a recent speech made by Senator Schuez at St. Louis. It is full of good seuse, and strikes tolling blows at the administration for the methods of its dealings with the Southern States. It brands the KELLOGG governraent in Louisiana as a i'raud, though it fails to justii'y the action of the McEjfEEY officials in doposing Kellogg by force. It gives good advice to the Southern Demócrata and Conservatives, and equally good advice to the President, in recommending the removal of Marshal Packard and the other United States officals who meddlo with local politics in Louisiana and other Southern States, and is severe upon Congress for having failed to rebuke the usurpation of Judge Düeell and reverse his action so far as was within its suhere and power. But what we wish to cali special attentiou to, is tho discussion of the Civil Rights bill, and the reasons Senator ScilUEZ assigns for opposing it. He holds it unconstitutional, - good and sufflcient reason, most assuredly. Ho also discusses the evil effects the bill, becoming a law, will have upon the school sys. tenis of the Southern States, and the direct injuries whích will be inflicted upon the educational interests of the whole people, and especially upon the colored people themselves. The points he inakes are well made, if' not unanswerable ; and yet, schools being public institutions and largely supported by public taxation, the question is rather one of wisdom and expediency, while other provisions or features of the bill conflict more directly with the constitutional and individual rights of the citizen. We refer to the provisions prohibiting hotels, theaters, concerts, etc, discriuiinating against negroes or excluding them altogether. A hotel is individual property, and its keeper has an undoubted right to keep and entertain therein whomsoever he pleases, and none others : to make it exclusively a hotel for men or women, for white men or black men, for American or Euglishman, Germán or Frenchman, Scotchman or Irishman, Spaniard or Italian, or to admit or exclude nationalities at pleasure. And this, just as our citizens who make boarding houses of their homes, advertise for ladies or gentlemen, literary, medical, or laws tudents, and refuse places at their tables to such as do not como up to their mark, howevnr arbitrarily they may hav? scored it. The same may be said of the theater or the concert hall. The proprietor may make and aunounce the conditions or' admittanoe, and the publio or the several classes of the public can enter on such conditions or stay away as they choose. And why have not the railroad managers and the steamboat owners the same right, or at least the right to provide separate cars or cabins or tables for special classes, conditious, races, nationalities, etc? We have no doubt that such is their right, and neither Congress nor State Legislature can deprivo thera of it, no more than Congress or Legislaturo can prescribo the rules which shall govern the individual citizen in selecting his daily associates or inviting guests to partake of the hospitalities of his home. To hold the reverse is to strike at the very root of individual liberty, to blot out the individual hiinself, and to stretch the powers of government to a dangerous length. It is here the Civil Rights bilí should be attacked. This is its most vulnerable part. Instead of a guarantee of either civil or political rights, it enters and drives home the wedge for the subjugation of the citizen, for the annihilation of individual liberty, and enthrones a partisan majority as dictator to the family, tho individual, and the conscience. It is time to cali a halt. Let every man, white, black, or copper colored, be guaranteed the " right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" the proteotion of person and property. That is tho mission of government and law. Neither has tho right to enforce social equality, which is the meaning of tho Civil Rights bill. Senator Feery is advertised to Ínflate the Republicans of Ypsilanti on the 13th. It will be " mostly wind." That FAMOUS "Circuit Rider," the Rev. ZachariaH Ciiandler, who is now holding a series of missionary or revival meetings throughout the State, is officially reported as having preached his opening sermón (at Plint) froiu tho following text, " By their fruit yo shall know them." The " organ" makes him say : Pohtioal parties were and over had been a necessity. Amoiift all nations, civilized and barbarous, Christianized and heathen, politica] partios were to bo found ; tlioy were a Bafety valve to public discontsnt ; tlioy were a necessity, and they would continue until tho end oi the world or the advent of tho millennium. In Michigan we had, and still have, two politioal partiea and hut two. To be sure there was an organization started about three years ago as soinethiiij fresh and ncw, known as the Liberal Republican party, but in reality it was oldei than the birth of tho Savior, for its biography was wvitten 1,062 years bet'ore Christ's birth. He would road it : " Iavil Mierefore departed thence, and eaoaped to tli f cave of Ailulkiiii ; and when li is brethren and all hifi fat lic i's houae heaid ii. they went down thit her to him. And everyone that was ín distress and everyoni' that was iu drlil and rveryone that was dlsCOUtented, gathered themselves tinto hint; and he b&came a Captain ove-r them ; and Ihete were wilh him ahout 400 men. ' The Liberal Republican party, in short, was simply nothing more nor lesa than a sort oí halí-way station, where discontented soreheads could stop to rest. AVithout trespassing upon the time and patienoe of our readers by following tho ohain of reasoning (?) of the preacher, we beg leave to say thit thu Reverend ChanDLER has not been very happy in his citution of Soripture, and that crediting DAVID and his small band as being the prototypej of the Liberal Republican party may be ominous. David was the chosen of the Lord, the anointed sucoess or of Saul, temporarily fleeing from the vengeance of his royal father-in-law. He was " the man after God's own heart," a fact which no doubt caused the enmity of Saul. Our preacher could not have pursued his Scriptural readings very far, or he would have learned that hia " halfway station," the " Cave of Adullain," in which the Liberal Republican party had ita birth if HE Jhas construed Scripture correctly, was but a step from victory and the throne, and that from the day the four hundred distressed and discontented gathered therein, there was neither rest nor peace for the oppressor Saul. The Liberal Republicans ought to return a vote of thanks to the Rev. Zaciiariah for giving them such ancient birth, such noble lineago, such promise of certain triumph. The late revolution in Louisiuna had its origin or cause in the settled coriviction that the coming election was to be manipulated under the odious and outrageoixs registration law, and by the aid of United States troops under the command of Marshal PACKARD, for tho sole purpose of continuing the lile of the Kelloog regime in the Legislature. That there was ground for this conviction will be seen in the following questions put to applieants for registration : Registrar- " Do you belODg to tho White League 't" " Yes." M You must theu briug two witnesses to provo your majority." This to men with gray beards. Again : " You wish to register '" " Yes." " Will you vote for Lowell (the defaulting Postmaster, now a candidate tor re-eloctiou to the Lower House) ?" " No." " Tlien you must bring your certifícate of baptism to prove that you are twenty-one." The forrespondeut who sends these interroga tories to the New York World, adds, "In several instancesmen who have exercised the eleetive franchise for years were thus treated. They applied to the courts. They were turned away with the statement that a court of law could not meddle with politics." And the correspondent inight have added that the registration law makes the acts of the boards - the creatures and tools of Gov. Kellogg - final, and prohibits appeal or review. Is it a matter of wonder that there was kicking against such a law ; that free men determined to break the shackles with which they were bound ; that they even sought to get rid of the usurper by revolution ? It is true that the President could not recognize and sustain tbe McBnery government, and it is equally true that the Kellogg government depended for prolonged existence upon that fact alone, having no constituency to givo it either moral or physical support. 1 The Courier of last week " warped it" " to Mr. Eübison, President of tb e Agricul■ tural Society, because Mr. S. F. Bhown, ' of Kalamazoo, Master of the Stato Grange, gave an " exposition of the beauty and excellence of the Grango," on tho Fair grounds, on Thursday, ia place of the " usual [but out of date] address." ïhe Courier says : " So far as we could understand the addrcss of Mr. Brown, the one grand object to be obtained was the election of üraugers to Congress." ïhe charge that Mr. Biiown was brought here to advance Mr. Robison's political interests, for that is the meaning of the article, if it means anything, and was not writteu on the solé principie of slopping over, is easily disposed of, and that by the simple statement that a Grange Picnic was announced before Mr. Eobison seriously thought of being a candídate for Congress, when Mr. Ciiilds expected to be the Kepublican candidate, and that in the sole interest of the Agricultural Society, with the single view to an increased atteudance. Mr. Brown, as speaker, was simply substituted for Mr. Smedley, of Ohio, who could not come, and the picnio dinnor was necessarily dispensed with. If Mr. Eobison was guilty of indiscretion or intriguo, Mr. Bitows, or as our cotemporary styles him, the " Groat Mogul," good Kepublican as he is, was equally indiscreet or consonted to be made a cheap tooi. And now the Republicans of Kalainazoo havo indoraed this samo " Great Mogul," this agent for Mr. RoiuSON", by nominating kim for Senator. - The Courier should haul them over the coals. The Hillsdale Business niakes a note of the l'act that "Uncle Audrew," of Bharon, is a Eepublican and a supporter of W'alI)HON, and then asks : "Isn't it pretty cheeky to nomínate a man to Congress, and ask people to support hiin, who has not the politioal confidence of his own father ? Isn't it now f We dou't know that father and son ave uuder any more obligation to agreo politioally than uncle and nephew, brother and brother, etc , or that it implies " oheek" in thia or any similar case. The son may be wiser thau the father, and as the last time John ran against the old gentleman (for Supervisor), ho flaxed hini so that he has not deaired to try it over (and that in a town then Kepublican), it is more than probable that he is the better man of the two. Will the Business propound another connundruin ?