Politics

SINCE the Apostle Paul accounted to the liberal Corinthians for the contrast between the magnitude of the work of converting the world, and the insignificance of the appointed instrumentalities, by saying that “ God hath chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise,” we may not despise the agents presented to us by the allied Democrats and Liberal Republicans for elevating the character of our government ; although a convention which originated in a crusade against the protective-tariff system nominated the extremest advocate of protection, and although the acquiescing convention, which adopted for its motto “ Reconciliation,” accepted for its candidate the extremest promoter of all those legislative measures and administrative acts to emancipate and enfranchise and protect, which constitute the burden of the complaint of the irreconcilables.

These things seem foolish to the wise ; and if none but the wise are confounded, there is political confusion enough to show a general prevalence of wisdom. Mr. Greeley as the candidate of the Democratic party makes a situation that exceeds all rational calculations, and has a stupefying effect on the public mind ; men, principles, emblems, and campaign ammunition stores are confounded. We behold Republican journals and speakers laboring to persuade the Democrats that Mr. Greeley has so hated and reviled their party, that it is morally impossible for them to vote for him. We behold on the other side journals and public speakers of the most malignant type of Democratic partisanship embracing the sudden conviction that Mr. Greeley has always been in sympathy with the Democratic party, and is the real Moses to lead it from captivity to dominion, and to smite the rock of public patronage in its behalf.

Is this conversion or stratagem ? Is it that childlike simplicity which the Scripture says must attend the new birth, or is it a gigantic fraud ? Is it a revolution, or a new shuffle for the spoils of power ? Has a great principle just appeared above the horizon, to overwhelm all the disputes that have divided mankind, or is this but the transformation scene of the spectacle plays, a mere matter of managerial business, and a thing worked by cranks and levers and pullies of the rudest construction ?

The movement creating the Cincinnati Convention began upon a material and economical question ; but it gathered round it the sentiment of lifting the civil service above party considerations, and the vague aspiration for an elevation of the administration to a purer atmosphere. Of course, human governments will be perfect about the time when humanity shall be perfected. Even in those governments where wisdom should be assured by the divine right through which they exist, enough error can be found to make a chronic need of reform and a frequent one of revolution. Perfection is not to be looked for in a government which by its conditions cannot rise higher than the average intelligence and morality of the people. But aspirations for a higher administration and a higher state of public morality are natural and desirable, and they certainly appeared in the rise of the Cincinnati Convention. There were political idealists who thought these aspirations for better government would result in the nomination of a statesman to whose substantial qualities they had added all their fancy could draw ; whose transcendent merits would be recognized by the whole country. They fancied that all selfish and partizan. motives were to be left behind, and that this convention would lift itself into a purer sphere. But even before the convention came together, the desire for a combination that should promise immediate success in the election, had overcome both the moving causes of tariff reform and the sentiment of political purity, and had brought into it the same elements and motives that constitute all party nominating conventions.

For tariff reform it produced a Presidential candidate who called himself a rabid protectionist, but who nevertheless consented to suspend the office of the President in legislation, in the matter of all bills relating to the tariff. As the greater part of our revenue comes from the tariff, this embraces the foundation of our finances, the public faith, and the means of carrying on government. So the beginning of a higher administration was to compromise the constitutional functions of the President, and to tie his hands in affairs involving not only the economical question of protection, but the public faith and public solvency. The higher regard for the Constitution was to begin by an abandonment of a constitutional duty, by a desertion of convictions of public welfare, and by a taking of the oath of office with a mental reservation.

For the elevation of administration in wisdom, purity, and impartiality, the convention chose a candidate famous as an intolerant partisan, with garments smelling of the battle over the dispensation of the public offices in New York, and with a personal grievance which had turned him against President Grant, after he had taken a conspicuous occasion to declare for his renomination. And we have the testimony of some of the foremost men in that convention,— some of whom are supporting Mr. Greeley under this protest, — that his peculiar promoters in that body were of a character most unpromising for the elevation of administration.

Yet the Cincinnati Convention presented a collection of sentiments, and the Baltimore Democratic Convention has adopted the same with the Cincinnati candidate, and they invite the people to shut their eyes and memories and reason to all other things, and to judge them by these sentiments alone. The vaunted merit of their platform is that it indorses what the Republican party has done, and repeats the glittering generalities that are well worn in Republican platforms. The only important difference is in the resolution substantially declaring local government sufficient and final for the protection of citizens ; and this Mr. Greeley has virtually repudiated in his letter of acceptance, in which he says that this is “subject to our solemn constitutional obligations to maintain equal rights to all citizens,” — which is what the Republican party hold as to the matter of protecting persons by the national authority. The State governments should give adequate protection ; but the national government will not abandon its right and duty to see that it is given, nor allow the State governments to deprive persons of the franchises it has conferred.

We can recognize the beauty of these sentiments. The Republican party has made them familiar and popular in the face of inveterate Democratic hostility. But is the adoption of them by the Democratic party a change of nature ? And if it were, is the adoption of Republican sentiments and the indorsement of Republican acts, by the Democratic party, a reason for condemning the Republican as unfit to be trusted, and exalting the Democratic as alone worthy to administer the government ?

But it is likely that the matters of platform professions and of personal inconsistencies and unfaithfulness and of party stultification will have less effect in governing men’s minds than they have prominence in the literature of the campaign, and that the reflecting will think on the chances of real administrative reform through the success of this queer coalition. It is to be noted that the original objects of reform have sunk out of sight as the party strategy has gone forward. The question of tariff reform is relegated to a place where it makes no sign. Civil-service reform is treated as if incongruous in a coalition of Mr. Greeley and the Democratic party. The cause which is now put to the front is conciliation or reconciliation. Since the professions of the coalition indorse as finalities all that the Republican party has done to establish the conditions of peace, the new terms of conciliation seem to be that the Republican party shall be put out of the government, and the Democratic party, with Mr. Greeley as its President, shall be put in. Thed reconciliation will be perfected. Yet how will this reconcile the Republican party ? It is natural that Mr. Greeley, accepted by the Southern Democratic party as its candidate, should believe that reconciliation has conic ; but what kind of a reconciliation is that which demands as its preliminary condition that the unreconciled shall bear sway ? It has always been found that human nature and human prejudices are very persistent. They are peculiarly so in such a peculiar civilization as that of the late slave States. Mr. Greeley has many supporters in the South, but as yet they are reconciled after a fashion entirely their own. Their hatred of all the means of their subjugation is as fierce as ever. Service in the Confederate Army continues to be the allprevailing qualification far office, and service in the National Army is still the cause of social ostracism and of lawless hostility. The immigrant from the North, though of eight years’ residence, continues to be stigmatized as a carpet-bagger, if he is a Republican, and the native Republican is a “scallawag” in the conciliation vocabulary.

The protective-tariff question, with the affairs of revenue and finance and public faith, is to be left to the tender mercies of a Democratic majority in Congress, which the success of this coalition in the matter of the Presidency is expected to bring in. It is a party which has no definite ideas on the tariff question, but which has made a deceptive pretence of favoring the poor by throwing off the chief revenue duties, — a party with which the true revenue reformers should most dread to leave their cause. If it is a requisite to conciliation, that the party which kept the Republic from dissolution shall be politically disqualified, and the party which tried to dissolve it shall be set over us, it will seem but a moderate demand that all obligations and claims growing out of the war shall be placed on an equality. And into the control of a majority, whose Southern managers will be instigated by hostility to all revenue for paying the debt contracted in their conquest, or for paying any war-claims without embracing theirs, our revenue and entire finances must be flung to take their chances, with the constitutional power of the President for their protection abandoned. Evidently, the success of the coalition is not promising to tariff reform, but is full of danger to our finances and to the general welfare.

We now come to the sentiment of civil service reform. It arose in the Republican party. It has caused earnest efforts to throw off a degrading official system entailed by Democratic administrations. It is to the credit of the Republican party that during its own possession of power it originated the cause of civil service reform and made the sentiment popular ; whereas, when General Grant came into the administration, a Liberal Republican and Democratic coalition under Johnson had left our civil service the most corrupt and degraded on earth. The existing system of parcelling out official appointments in the States to the Congressmen is very hard to overthrow. It may be too great for any President to cope with. But it was in the Republican party that the aspiration for a higher civil service began, and that party has given it whatever of force it has in the public mind. What prospect, on the other hand, does the election of Mr. Greeley and a Democratic Congress hold out for civil-service reform? There is an absence of any change in the character of the Democratic party on this subject, and there is the present evidence that to get possession of office was the sole reason why the Democrats submitted to the humiliation of taking Mr. Greeley for their candidate and of adopting his platform.

Mr. Greeley’s life does not show any scrupulousness about using the public patronage as means of party warfare, nor any desire to lessen the means. He has freely assented to the practice which makes the public offices the spoils of victory and the means of continuing party supremacy. Mr. Greeley’s public justification for leaving the Republican party and entering into a Democratic coalition to put it out of the government, was that the office-holders would control the Republican Convention, and that they had fixed the renomination of Grant. The gravest charge made by his supporters generally against the administration is that it controls the Republican party and the country by means of its official retainers. He has thus committed himself to the necessity of a general turning out of Republican officers in order to purify the government and remove his enemies and the enemies of reconciliation ; and he has promised that in his appointments to office he will not regard the previous party relations of those who now support him. Here are the conditions for a wholesale removal of office-holders, and the installing of a fresh horde, taken from the elements of this coalition in proportion to their respective numbers. Is Mr. Greeley the man who could resist the demands of the political managers that have nominated him, or who could break up the custom which has given Congressmen the appointing power? It is a task which a man of the firmest character might hesitate to undertake. The circumstances would be most unfavorable for attempting such a contest against the claims of Congressmen and the hunger of the long-excluded party. And if he should attempt the work, to him morally impossible, of rejecting the nominations or the advice of members of Congress, whose recommendations would he take ? His election would make inevitable a fiercer scramble for the offices than has ever disgraced our government, with all its disorganization and demoralization of the official service. The conditions would make the reform of civil service impossible under Horace Greeley, and would make its degradation sure. But if it were possible that this man of fickle character could be made of iron will, so as to refuse the claims of Senators and Representatives, the administration would at once be without a supporting majority in Congress ; and the country has learned by several experiences that a conflict between President and Congress drops the responsibility of government between them, and is more corrupting than the sole government of any party can be.

Before plunging into such a sea of troubles it may be well to examine the ills we have, to see if they can be cured by the desperate remedy proposed. We have no intention of retracting our own censures of the President, or of assuming the defence of mistakes which we have condemned ; but in the face of far worse evils impending, it is time to acknowledge that his errors are venial compared with the excesses we have to apprehend from the ascendency of his Democratic opponents.

He has shown bad taste in the appointment of his relations to office, and has associated himself with certain corrupt and shabby politicians, and is not a profound statesman ; but we see in these facts no reason for displacing him by a man of worse taste, worse companionship, and less statesmanship.

The New York Custom-House is and has been a great scandal, but we shall not turn it into a school of virtue by giving it to the control of the Tammany Democrats and the Fenton Republicans.

In seeking to acquire San Domingo Grant followed the traditional policy and “ manifest destiny ” of the Democratic party, but his action throughout that affair has been scrupulous compared with the Democratic method of annexing Mexican territory. Any former Democratic administration would eagerly have seized such an occasion, and its party would have cowed all opposition.

If he has lacked a radical policy on currency reform, are we to look for a better from the statesman who would solve the problem of making convertible seven hundred millions of paper money with one hundred and seventy-five millions of coin by a placard over the door of the public treasury ?

If he has presented the indirect claims to the Geneva Tribunal, swelled by the cost of the prolongation of the war, who was so mad in this amplification of our injuries as a certain great editor who vehemently urged that we should make them a ground for requiring the cession of Canada ? Has not Grant also resisted the recklessness and criminal purposes which sought to plunge the country into a war for the annexation of Cuba, while the editor-statesman helped the filibustering agitation ?

The President has been reluctant to advise the conferring or to use the extraordinary military power conferred upon him in the government of the South, while the reconciling candidate was crying out for it. The soldier was slow to use military power, while the man of peace fiercely demanded it. In his military and presidential administration, his leniency toward the South has caused sharp jealousy and ill-concealed enmity in many of those who now assume to be the apostles of reconciliation.

With President Grant the country has at least an assurance of tranquillity. It will not be lifted to a state of perfection, but it will incur no new peril. The administration of Grant will make no rash experiments on our finances and our dangerously expanded currency. The public credit will be safe. The country will have security from foreign Wars, filibustering attempts, and domestic violence. The constitutional office of the President will remain intact, to be used to protect the public credit and treasury from hostile legislation and the boundless Southern claims growing out of the war. Reconciliation will be established on the only possible terms, submission to equal laws. There will be that public confidence which is requisite to the expanded trade and credit of civilization, and which is a vital need in our financial currency and banking situation ; and the country will have as much currency reform, tariff reform, and civil-service reform as Congress and popular opinion will support.