of their own important interests, and consequently that strong barriers should be raised to protect the Government against the influence of popular feeling and action. It was their policy, openly proclaimed and defended, to cripple the influence of the people, and to confine and restrain their action within narrow limits; and upon the other hand, to strengthen the arm of the National Government, and to build up and foster an associated interest of wealth which, like the aristocracy of England, should hold in check the blind, unthinking, unreflecting mass who were supposed not to have sufficient intelligence to choose the right, nor honesty to pursue it. These ideas entered deeply into all the principles and measures of the Federal party.

They endeavored to invest the General Government with extraordinary and dangerous power, by a loose and latitudinarian construction of the Constitution, and to cripple the power of the people by imposing restraints upon the liberty of speech and the press. Hence, under that clause in the Constitution which gives Congress the right "to provide for the common defence and general welfare," authority was found by the Federal party to pass a sedition law, by which, "to speak evil of the President, the head of the Departments or the members of Congress," was a high misdemeanor, punishable by heavy fine and imprisonment. In the same spirit of construction, the Federal party, under the constitutional clause which gives to Congress the power "to regulate commerce," found authority for the establishment of a National Bank, and thus laid the foundation of that system which was to bind together, by one common interest, the whole wealth of the country, and by the enjoyment of exclusive privileges, hold a controlling influence over the people and the Government.

It may appear surprising at this day, to many, that any of the patriots of the Revolution should have embraced and advocated such doctrines as we have attributed to the Federal party. But it should be remembered that our free Government was regarded as an experiment, and that many wise and patriotic men looked upon its success as extremely doubtful. The apology, then, for many of the early Federalists, whose patriotism and love of country no one questions, is to be found in their anxiety to establish the Government upon a permanent and lasting foundation, and their distrust of popular intelligence and virtue.

Antagonist to the party of which we have been speaking was another, which contended for free and equal rights-for civil liberty in its most enlarged and comprehensive sense. This party had inscribed upon its banner "Democracy!" and among its leaders were men of bold and daring genius; men who burst the fetters of superstition, and, trampling upon the long established, cherished and venerated customs of tyrannical government, tore the trappings of State from the sovereign hereditary prince and noble, and proclaimed man-plain, simple man, as he came from the hands of his Maker, the natural and rightful sovereign of the world. The corner stone of their political faith was an abiding confidence in the virtue and intelligence of the people, and their capacity for self-government. Human government was by them regarded as a mere agent of the people created by them, with limited and defined power to be exercised only for their good, and for the protection of their natural and equal rights; and not as a power to be raised above the people to bind them by arbitrary, unjust and unequal laws-Democracy built her impregnable tower of principle upon the broad basis of human dignity and human rights. Such as we have described, so widely different in principle, were the two political parties of this new Republic.

Whether his rising ambition for a higher place in democratic councils influenced the acquirement of an "organ," or whether mere zeal for the doctrines in which he had such faith urged him to this method of wide and regular proselyting, the incidental publicity of his newspaper work must have reacted strongly on his career; for his engagements and appointments follow in increasing frequency and importance. Thus, for illustration, he was chosen at a public meeting, in February, 1840, as one of a small committee to urge upon the State legislature the completion of the North Branch canala work commenced in 1828, but still only half finished. May 12, he was made a member of the central standing committee of the democratic party in Bradford County-the controlling and operating power of the local party organization. On July 4, he was the orator of the day at Troy, the secondary county seat; July 16, he spoke again to "one of the largest and most

enthusiastic meetings of the democracy of north Pennsylvania, for Van Buren, Polk and democracy." July 30, he was appointed delegate to the young men's democratic convention at Lancaster, which was an excursion into a larger political field and into Buchanan's home town. In August, he was reported as making a most eloquent address to a political gathering assembled to celebrate the passage of the Independent Treasury Bill; in September, as addressing the "largest meeting of democrats ever assembled in the county," in honor of the anniversary of Perry's victory.

Early in 1841, he had his first taste of public office, when his then close friend and associate in the political leadership of the county, Victor E. Piollet, made him his assistant in the superintendency of the Tioga line of the North Branch canal. It was a position which imposed but few duties, but carried a salary of $1,000, and the appointment filled the editor of the opposing party paper with fury. In February, he appeared before the legislature at Harrisburg to oppose a projected division of Bradford County, by which the western part would have been detached and joined to parts of Tioga and Lycoming, to form a new county-Penn-with Troy as its county seat. In March, he served as "representative delegate" in the State convention at Harrisburg which nominated David R. Porter for the governorship by a majority of 136 to 2. In May, he led a democratic meeting at the courthouse in Towanda and was appointed to draft resolutions condemning the legislature for futile legislation. In July, he was placed on the "vigilance committee," a sort of pre-primary body in charge of the arrangements for the coming election. He had become a recognized power in the congressional conferences, even when not personally present as a conferee.

In September, he was advanced to the chairmanship of the standing committee-substantially the party leader in his county. October found him presiding at a meeting called to consider the establishment of a Democratic Association, and then active as its president, delivering lectures at the semi

monthly meetings and gathering a library of books and documents with the "high and praiseworthy object of effecting a more general dissemination of the important truths of democracy."

The closing months of 1841 found him actively interested in another direction also, as one of a number of citizens "associated for the purpose of worshiping Almighty God according to the faith and discipline of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America." His name stands third among those listed in the charter of incorporation of "The Rector, Wardens and Vestry of Christ's Church" (Towanda, Pa.), suggesting that he was the first vestryman. The same year witnessed his initiation as a Mason; and this espousal of Free Masonry, on Wilmot's part, was an interesting and a rather curious thing; for it was just during his most impressionable years, so far as the choice of life associations and influences was concerned, that anti-Masonry reached its climax in American politics and became one of the most important anti-democratic forces in State and national elections. Again and again after he had begun to concern himself with the success of his own party, he had seen the anti-Masonic vote exercised against candidates at the polls; he had even seen it unite with the whigs in strength sufficient to elect a governor-Ritner-in his own State. Thaddeus Stevens, in later years his rival for the Senatorship, was a bitter anti-Mason. Possibly an earlier impression still, in favor of Masonry, had been made on David Wilmot's mind by Salem Town, during his college days at Aurora; possibly, also, the fact that his particular idol, Jackson, was a Mason, directed his inclinations, and his natural courage in following his own judgment did the rest.

At all events, he joined Union Lodge No. 108, Free and Accepted Masons, at Towanda, June 27, 1841. "The midsummer St. John's day of 1842," says Hon. James H. Codding in his History of Union Lodge, "was celebrated with feasting and an oration by David Wilmot. This brother achieved national fame in Congress, where he served in both

branches, and was probably, in later years, the most celebrated member ever enrolled in the Lodge." He became Past High Priest of Union Royal Arch Chapter No. 161, in 1852, shortly before the delivery of the address quoted in the Appendix to this volume. He was made an Odd Fellow, also, in Bradford Lodge No. 167, September 4, 1847, and so continued to the time of his death, but in that organization he was not active and never filled any of the chairs.

In February, 1842, Wilmot was urged to seek the nomination to Congress for himself; but he became instead the controlling power in overturning the action of the conference, compelling the retirement of its unfairly chosen candidate, Hamlin, and securing the nomination and election of the man whom Bradford County had designated as her second choice, A. H. Read. He also took an active part at this time in the movement for abolishing imprisonment for debt, and was a member of the committee which drafted a report and resolutions for submission to the legislature, pointing out the "barbarities and fallacies of the practice and the abuses to which it gave rise." He concerned himself vigorously in the agitation over the reduction of the currency by the retirement of some $2,000,000 of State "relief notes," and continued his interest in canal matters by serving (in May, 1842) on a committee on resolutions which memorialized the legislature for the completion of the work, proposing its transfer to a chartered company. Wilmot contributed an additional section, stipulating that the company should be required to begin the work within a year and to finish it in three years, under penalty for failure to keep that schedule. The same month, he was reported as present and "eloquent" at a Buchanan meeting, indorsing the Lancaster statesman in the highest terms. In August, he was reelected chairman of the standing committee; in September, to a special committee to combat a division in the party and oppose "the seductions of the Workingmen's Convention." 1843 found him even more active in public meetings, his addresses being described as "rich in thought and sentiment