pposed the change. The
Democratic party were a unit in its favor. They advocated
suffrage for poor men on the same ground that the Republicans
have advocated it more recently for the negro--on the same ground
upon which Mr. Beecher advocated it last night for women--_as a
natural right_. They said, "All men have equal natural rights to
life, liberty, and property; if so, they have a natural right of
self-defense in the enjoyment of these rights. Now, in a state of
nature, self-defense takes the form of individual violence--of
the pistol or the club; but in a state of civilization men appeal
to the law, and government is nothing but an organized system of
self-defense for the benefit of the individual citizen." The old
Democratic party said, "Poor men have rights of life, liberty,
and property, poor men have a natural right of self-defense;
therefore, in a state of society they have a right to the ballot
which is the organized weapon of self-defense for the individual
citizen." What was the result? The Democratic party swept the
Union on that platform. They obtained a majority in the
government of the States and in the Federal Government. For more
than a generation they ruled this country as the poor man's
party. That result followed inevitably from their principles,
because parties, like individuals, are sure to obtain their
deserts in the long run. When any party appeals to that fine
sense of justice which is in the heart of every human being,
sooner or later its success is certain. The Democratic party
obtained the control of the Government for two generations
because it appealed to that sense of justice? But what was the
result to the country? America became known all over the world as
the country of the poor man. In America alone the masses had the
ballot. That was what brought from the shores of Europe this
great influx of foreign labor which has felled our forests, and
fenced our prairies, and built up the waste places of our
continent. There are to-day in Russia hundreds of thousands of
acres of land as good as any in the world, which have never been
cultivated, and yet Europeans, by thousands, turn their backs on
Russia, coming to America and going far into the interior to make
their homes, not because our land is better, or our climate