The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1859-08-03

the bitter hostility of the contending parties which
surround him. We are not blind then to the
knowledge that we espouse a cause which, at the
outset, is weak, except in so far as it has the
strength of truth; and whose support may be I'M
productive Of other results, than the barren honors
which are always to be reaped in the paths of rec
titude. But with the firm conviction that one en-
ergetic and we'll directed effort by the people Of
Baltimore, will suffice to relieve them for some
time to come Of the powers which have usurped
| dominion over them, we cannot but maintain
the ground we have taken. 1t is of little
moment whether our action is misunderstood, or
our words miscontrued, if we can convince our
readers that we neither exaggerate nor alsify the
facts upon which it is our duty so repeatedly to
dwell. And turning again TO the subject on which
we touched few days since, and reterating what
we then said of the two political parties in this
city, we ask whether our condemnation OF both
shall be treated us an ebuition of partisan spleen,
and unempered prejudice, an expression of the
papable and living truth ? If we have not over
stated the decentralization of the two existing poit
ical divisions in our midst, what have our citizens
to hope from either, or rather what have they not
to fear from both? The American party has too
recently figured with fearful prominence before US
to render necessary recapitulation of its iniqui-
ties. The license accorded to an hundred familiar
bules, the liberation melted to the treachery with
which the police abandoned all show of duty upon
successive election days, the triumph with which
the MAYOR basey hailed a majority which he knew
to be fraudulent and false, and the unblushng cor
ruption which has met with forgiveness if not favor
from those who rule us-all these things are remem-
bered to its disgrace.
But it is to the future that men look most despond
ingly. The lists of the delegates. elected to the
Club Convention, as they are published from time
to time, prove, by the names Of the outlaws
comprehended in them, that the most degraded
ruffianism of Baltimore is being embodied, and
the public notice that the Clubs attending the next
meeting, ''and they only, will constitute the
''American Club Convention the coming cam
''paign," shows the exclusive and active power
they propose to exert on that OCCASION Taught
by what has gone before, and warned by what is
distinctly foreshadowed who shall say that we
despair, without reason, of good government from
such quarter.
Nor does the Democratic party-and we
now speak of it only as it is and has mani
tested itself in this city-offer any guarantee that
its rule would be better to-day than it was few
years since. 1t perpetrated much wrong and out
rage then, which it has not yet answered for, and
which it cannot paliate or ignore Con-
trolled by the paltriest means and the basest
men, it was the merest tool of the political hacks
of the passing hour. 1t clothed shameless
debauchery and drunkenness in the judicial robes,
and the defled judgment scat became a thing to
be scorned and scofed at by the people It en-
trusted public offices TO the keeping ofincompetent
or unclean hands, and in three Courts, out offve,
the public funds were unscrupuously pundered
So many unworthy, unfit and dishonest officials
have seldom found preferment together, as were
tumultuously elevated to place. in one batch, after
the passage of the new Constitution. If