To achieve so desirable an end, its leaders are ready to
coalesce, here with the Douglas, and there with the Breckinridge
faction of that very Democratic party of whose violations of the
Constitution, corruption, and dangerous limberness of principle they
have been the lifelong denouncers. In point of fact, then, it is
perfectly plain that we have only two parties in the field: those who
favor the extension of slavery, and those who oppose it,--in other
words, a Destructive and a Conservative party.
We know very well that the partisans of Mr. Bell, Mr. Douglas, and Mr.
Breckinridge all equally claim the title of conservative: and the fact
is a very curious one, well worthy the consideration of those foreign
critics who argue that the inevitable tendency of democracy is to
compel larger and larger concessions to a certain assumed communistic
propensity and hostility to the rights of property on the part of the
working classes. But the truth is, that revolutionary ideas are
promoted, not by any unthinking hostility to the _rights_ of property,
but by a well-founded jealousy of its usurpations; and it is
Privilege, and not Property, that is perplexed with fear of change.
The conservative effect of ownership operates with as much force on
the man with a hundred dollars in an old stocking as on his neighbor
with a million in the funds. During the Roman Revolution of '48, the
beggars who had funded their gains were among the stanchest
reactionaries, and left Rome with the nobility.
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