The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1852-08-26

SCENES IN CONGRESS-CAUSE AND EFFECT.-
The scene in the House of Representatives report
of which appeared in yesterdays HERALD, and in
which three members-two from Tennessee, and one
from Kentucky-were the chief actors, is disgrace
full to Congress and the country to the last degree
but 1t is only Of many such scenes as have been
enacted in both chambers during the last two
months. The last is certainly the climax of Con-
gressonal blackguardism, and might well challenge
any other national Legislature in the world to match
it. The principal draafis persona, the stars of the
occasion, consisted Of one democrat and two wings.
All three called each other liars" usque ad matt
scum. In the French Assembly, or the British
Parliament, if such language could possibly have
been used it would have led, not only to duels and
committals to prison by the presiding officer, but
probably to expulsion from the house. In Congress
such language has become so familiar that it only
produces momentary excitement, and is thought
of no more while the nation is disguised from Maine
to Texas
These scenes are highly injurious to the re-
putation of the country and this scene in par
ticular will, doubt, be seized by the London press
and turned to account as triumphant argument
against repubcansm, while the wits of the Partisan
journals not being permitted to exercise themselves
upon the affairs of government at home, will reye in
sarcasm upon these proceedings of the grave legis
lators of the model republic at this side of the
Atlantic. But these scenes do not spring from re-
publicanism but from the present corrupt state of
parties and above all from the corrupt and degraded
party presses which debauch the public morals and
bring down the tone ofthe Legislature their
own level. These wing and democratic members
call each other liars, and they assa 1.-THE characters
of the candidates for the Presidency. Where did
they find precedent for this! In the columns of
the party journals of both sides of the House-par-
ticuary the leading party Journals in this city-the
Tribune and the Erening Post-the one conducted
by Bryant, metamorphosed from poet into poll
tician, and the other by Greeley, turned from a
printer to politician, but dirty all through The
epithets in which these journals have long INDUCED
towards each other, and towards their political OPP
ponents generally, make tame the classic elegance
Of the vocabulary of Billingsgate. A favorte
phrase for example, with the Tribune is s'You lie,
villain, and you know it 20 It was the Tribune,
too, which originated the personal attacks on the
candidates for the Presidency, by calling General
Pierce drunkard and coward. And this low, vile,
beastly example, has been followed by members of
Congress, who, in the heat Of the moment, forget.
seize upon the language made SO familiar to them
by the dirty sheets they have been in the habit Of
reading. 1t was the poet politician and the printer
politician who established this ruian dialect the
conventional usage Of oil politicians; and to correct
the evil we must trace it to the source, and there
cut it Off If the fountain is impure, SO will be the
stream. Let no water be drank that emanates
from these poisoned filthy wellslet it not be tasted,
touched or handled. Let these journals be aban-
doned as unfit for the perusal Of gentlemen or
decent men, and particularly members Of Congress,
and let them take in their stead independent news
papers, like the HERALD, which will give them &C
curate news, and tell them what they never see in
those BLACKBOARD prints-the TRUTH and logical de-
auctions from facts couched in the language which
gentlemen and Christians are in the habit Of using.
After that is done there will be chance of Con-
gress reforming itself from decent example in the
press but as long as its members imbibe the impure
ia~us ouUu JVuIaIa tic rOos s.ilu tho TLb~ne
conveyed in the obscene language of brothels and
rum holes, it viii be as natural for them to speak
in the style, it is for little children brought
up at the Five Points, in New York, or at st. CHESS
in London, to lisp the blasphemies, curses, and OBJ
scenities, in which they "ve move, and have their
being