Official proceedings of the National Democratic convention, held at New York, July 4-9, 1868.: Reported by George Wakeman, official reporter of the Convention.

NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONPENTIONV.
negroes granted by the statute the privilege of being armed, while the same
is denied to them, deprives them of that sense of security which ever resides
with physical power, and places them under a constant menace from the
vicious and depraved elements of society. Hence the division between the
people and their rulers is something more than the mere array of conflicting
opinions, which, with free suffrage, and free speech, seldom breeds civil commotion, or injuriously affects the State. It is in this instance the threatening antagonism between the oppressor on the one hand, and the oppressed on
the other. The apprehension and natural resentment of the latter, and the
official insolence and hate of the former, retorting the detestation of which lie
is conscious, are constantly recurring provocations to physical violence.
Experience and history prove that there can be neither happiness nor prosperity for a State thus circumstanced. So long as republican forms are preferred on this continent, no American State can have any assurance of peace
and prosperity unless the ballot is free to the white American citizen. The
inherent vigor and imperial qualities of the white race will be content with
nothing less until they shall agree to accept other political institutions.
It is of the utmost importance to every free State, that those who are the
most intelligent, have the largest stake in social order, and possess property,
or are interested in property by the hope of accumulation through steady
industry, should participate in the government. But, in our unfortunate
Commonwealth, this is the very class which are excluded from the management of its affairs. The people are thus deprived in public business of the
efficient capacity of their best citizens. Their affairs are consequently in the
hands of incapable men,- too often entirely controlled by those who are
mere adventurers camped in their midst, like vagrant Huns for the purposes
of present plunder, in whose fidelity to theirinterests and integrity they have
not the slighest confidence, and to whom the language of Col. Barre used
in the British Parliament to describe a similar class that infested the American colonies, may not inappropriately be applied, when he spoke of the
colonial officers as "men sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their
actions, and to prey upon them, - men whose behavior on many occasions
has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them!" Yet
it would not be strict justice not to admit some honorable exceptions to this
rule. But these exceptions serve to modify only to a very limited extent the
vices and disorders naturally inherent in such depraved and tyrannical policies. For instance, though we have on the bench some honest judges of respectable ability, it is manifest that the Courts of the State lose their selfpossession and quail when confronted by the political ferocity of the hour.
Hard is the lot of that people when law shrinks from the defence of her own
altars from profanation, and plays the coward within "the holy of holier."
England has always accounted it an excess of misfortune whenever her
judiciary for a moment lost its fearless independence. Shall American republicans manifest in this matter less sensibility than British subjects? Will
they not demand that courts and judges shall stand unmoved amid the tempest of civil strife to defend the right even against their own mad passions?
Those laboring under disabilities as to suffrage and office embrace the
highest-intellects of the State. Among the disfranchised will be found the
aged pioneer, who, with axe and rifle, redeemed from the rude wilderness,
and the still ruder savage, our fruitful soil; secul-ed to civilization and culture
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