Secession Era Editorials Project

No Title.

New Orleans, Louisiana, Bee [Whig]

(19 May 1854)

"If a Democratic Member of Congress is led by his judgment and his conscience to vote for the bill, as we hope all Democrats will be led to do, and he returns to his constituents to encounter the clamor of Whigs and Abolitionists, together with disaffected men of his own party, no sensible man who understands and appreciates the character of the Executive, will believe that the President will allow such factious men to wield public patronage to overthrow any man at home who has given to the principles of the bill a cordial and conscientious support." Washington Union.

We read the foregoing with profound regret. Although we differ from the Union widely, and have, on many occasions, combated its propositions, still we would have it maintain a position becoming the recognized organ of a powerful administration. We think the paragraph above quoted contains humiliating admissions. Rightly read, it amounts to a proclamation of a system of rewards and punishments. It intimates, plainly enough, to all anti-Nebraska Democrats, that if they vote for this pet measure of the Administration, their claims, and the claims of their relatives and friends, to the patronage of the government, will be favorably considered; and that, if they sacrifice their popularity at home by so doing, the approving smiles of the Executive will be brought in requisition to recompense them for the loss! This is one side of the question. The other is, that if they prove refractory they will be rigorously and unsparingly proscribed by the powers that be!

That the foregoing annunciation will have influence, there is no doubt. Just now the President has several desirable offices in his gift; and, if the Union has spoken "by authority," which we can hardly believe, an attempt will be made to make each of those offices worth one, if not more, votes. We fear the effort will be attended with success. It will be eminently disgraceful, however, and will institute a dangerous and corrupt precedent.

If threats of proscription on the one hand, and the tender of place, emoluments and power, on the other, are to influence our future national legislation, the expensive Congressional feature of our government might as well be done away with, and plenary powers reposed in the President. It would look better, be more economical, and, probably, be better.