New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1854-01-18
THE DAIEYCRESCENT,
WEDNESDAY MORNING. JAN.Y IS. 1851
C0.gGRE SS1oNaL POLfTYcS

W6DNECDh1 MOtRINL. JAN / los loofs
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CONGRESSIONAL POLITICS.
We have paid, thus far, but little atten-
ton TO Congressional doings: thinking it quite
enough to present them, in this early part T.
the session, in an abstract regularly bre,ghs
down. For it is seldom until after que Ne"
Year holidays that business Of am inpor'anoo
IL taken up. except in years " ~ snVi' ~
sions. But besides this reason, there afe others
which influence us and rzake us ADVERT Win Ut
lie Measure. beoause with little respect, to the
acts and debates of our high national legisla-
tura n onuaiaaon with the whole country we
have lost 4 great part Of our respect for il, and
therefore, unhapp1y, of our interest in its trans
actions nomentous as these are to the well-be-
inc Of the land. 1t has fallen, as public body,
into just disrepute; and is so little what the
parliament, the g collective wisdom of great,
an enlightened, an honest and a free nation
should be, that good citizenis seldom instruct
ed, and is only in the general saddened, by
reading the minuter details of what it says and
does.
There can be nothing that more deeisvely and
absolutely gives the lie to all that certain par
ty babbles amongst us about g our progress"
than few great facts which we will now ricite
and which every body Of the slightest intelli-
gence will know that we recite truly
1t is incontestable that, progressively, in all
the branches Of its Government, our country
has come to be less and less ruled by its best and
ablest mon than it was in the outset. In al |
most every instance, the choice Of each new
President has been descent from a superior
to an inferior man. Sinking, by regular gra-
dations, from the best citizen and ruler that
ever wore the sovereign power, we have come at
last to o point at which not only will that
power be conferred upon man of the most
doubtful merit and no reputation, but one
equally destitute Of even popularity. So that
(strange anomalyD when we have come to ac-
cept our rulers, not at the hands of wise,
patriotic and free peoples merited choice, but
at that of blind and reasonless popularity,
that popularity itself is become an open cheat,
fiction and a phantasm, gotten up for the
occasion, and by every body known to be So
Such is our condition in regard to that which |
IS among us the power Of all powers, the roy /
atty Of our system, decorated with arepublican
name, but in reality stronger, less responsible,
more kingly than the executive office of the
British isles Pass on to the great secondary |
political power, Congress, and the decline, the |
degradation of our councils is equally unques-
tionable, though, from the impossibility of T
like simple comparison, less tangible But
every one knows that, as public, legislative
bodies, the House of Representatives and the
Senate have kept equal pace with the Execu-
tive branch, in it's Generalization. At present,
the one has lost all TALENT the other all respect
ability. To every man who has, like ourselves,
for but the last fourteen years, had the opportu-
nifty Of watching, with close personal knowl-
edge, the change and its regular progress, the
spectacle is most melancholy-the disastrous
results which it prefgures, most APPALLING. Nor
is that common testimony to the fact, by all
witnesses, necessary to establish it j: for who
can doubt that when the supreme office of the
Republic is bestowed SO heedlessly, the inferior
trusts will be distributed with an at least equal
leyity
And now, to what is all this conducting us,
with rapid strides He who cannot tell knows
nothing of public portents: he who sees not the
dangerous state of the case has never studied
the pathology Of even those worst diseases which
Stay nations, or at best ruin the entire health of
their social existence and make their govern .
ment itself one long disease.
The symptoms which we have already brought
TO view are alarming ones: but there are others
which, if less conspicuous, are even more fatal.
Not merely are all the nobler and unselfsh
IDEAS Of public life and duty departed from the
breasts Of politicians, but the mere common
people have forgot their country and know moth
ng but party An universal demagogue cor
'upts the leaders and besots the populaey. The !
country rants with every wild, raves with every !
nischievous and immoral opinion The worst t
md foolishest men and things have come to be n
ikeliest to succeed. Disheartened or disguised, t
'irtue and abilities turning away from pub :,
ic life to those private pursuits in which alone .,
hey find their reward. Wherever this last fact
ccurs the signature of destruction is upon the t.
'ody polite. t,
Is there no remedy But one. Shall we v
oint it out Useless, until the patient shall i
now that he needs physic; which then, prob y y
,bly. will he tnn late