Bound Volumes

December 21, 2023

185 YEARS AGO

Experience has shown that the tendency of all human government is, to corruption, oppression, and, finally, dissolution. Of course, no reflecting mind has hoped or expected that our government would, ultimately, be exempt from the common lot. Yet there were thousands—and we were among them—who had hoped, if they had not actually believed, that a government in itself so perfect and so well calculated to “secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number” as ours, might prove to contain within itself some extraordinary seeds of self-renovation. For ourselves however, we are obliged to confess that our faith in this respect has been sensibly weakened by events of recent occurrence. The danger to which we allude is the perversion and corruption of the Right of Suffrage—that right which is the fountain and the life-blood of all our other rights. The extent to which this corruption has been carried at last spring’s election in New Hampshire and the recent election in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and in this state, is enough to alarm every friend of freedom. Fraud, perjury and bribery, singly or combined, have, in these states, have been brought extensively to the aid of one or both of the contending parties. Voters have been imported in some cases; in others, they have been actually bought and bribed, and public officers have not been ashamed to lend their aid to the fabrication of partial, mutilated and false returns.

December 17, 1838