If they have been backward in their sympathy with the government,
it has been through their dislike of the puritanic spirit and the
humanitarian or socialistic elements they detected in the
Republican party, joined with a prejudice against political and
social negro equality. But their church everywhere opposes the
socialistic movements of the age, all movements in behalf of
barbarism, and they may always be counted on to resist the
advance of the socialistic democracy. If the country has had
reason to complain of some of them in the late war, it will have,
in the future, far stronger reason to be grateful; not to them,
indeed, for the citizen owes his life to his country, but to
their religion, which has been and is the grand protectress of
modern society and civilization.
>From the origin of the government there has been a tendency to
the extension of suffrage, and to exclude both birth and private
property as bases of political rights or franchises. This
tendency has often been justified on the ground that the elective
franchise is a natural right; which is not true, because the
elective franchise is political power, and political power is
always a civil trust, never a natural right, and the state judges
for itself to whom it will or will not confide the trust; but
there can be no doubt that it is a normal tendency, and in strict
accordance with the constitution of American civil society, which
rests on the unity of the race, and public instead of private
property.
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