Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1860-03-07

CRY OF WHkELIS0 at 10 O'clock. A N- on Wednesday
At chicaES M, On Hednesday the 18th day Of May
next, 70 nomlnate candidates for President and Vice
rsPresident Of tbs United States
w pubiished the other morning beau
tiful extract nom oneof the reviews, coh-
corning the life aud times, Of Lord, Bacon
1.-THE extract portrayed the beauty, the pu-1
--irity, the Quiet studiops caste of-Bacon's
fsyouth. CHS life~Ras as pure as that Of
e5AIilton, or OF Pascal, though unlike the
poets of Paradise and the Pensees, he liE-.
&c cd Ina court where gallautry was,ih vogue
. ~ and beauty was bought and sold.''>SEyen
in the flush of his life, we are told, abe
- had none of the vices of young mem
"He neither drank, nor gained, nor ran
wild and loose in love" How then, the
reviewer asked, ibid he not sooner than
he did, win his way qplace." 1t was not
for. want of ability, for we are told: "his
brain beat with victorious consciousness of
power, and his blood had that fiery
strength which glows with white heat at
an opposing blast" Why was it then,
that "while men with far lower claims
than his, got posts and hOnors, solicitor
ships, judgeships, secretaryships, embas-
sizes, did this man come to pass the ripe
age of forty-six without gaining power or
placer" "Canit have been,I' the reviewer
with melancholy emphasis asks, because
r. at last abe was serEile and corrupt?n ''If
SO, she says, ''logcis lie, moral theories
a sham" .l
We do not intend to specially remark up
-l'i on the quotations we have made from the
extract although it is good text for
long article Que which might we'll serve
to point a moral. The life of Lord Bacon
was a very singular, as well as very mel
-ancholy one, and itlseems to, US that the
d Dclose of his life aud times presented pic
ture not unlike that OF, the public life of
s..s these our times. 1t was a most melsn-
~. choly fact that Lord Bacon did not obtain
that power and place which his ambition
prompted him to aspire to, while lie re-
tainad the Innocence and purity of char
acter that so beautifully characterized his
youth Twas only when lie threw off all
The moral instincts and the restraining con-
yictions of his great nature and gave him
self up to the social Generalization and
the political obliquity of the age in which
he lived and the society in which he mo-
yed, that his great talents met with COM
j .penaatory patronage This, we say, is the
melancholy fact, as it stands. He could
OF not satisfy his ambition, an ambition natu-
raj to q man of his power, and be the man,
the one greatest and best of men, that ma
tnre apparently so deliberately designed
him to be-.
e & Lord Bacor's experience is that of scores
= Of our own political men, on smaller
scale. The expeditions of political corrup-
ton and the mean infamous ways by which
men Of inferior talents, but of infinite low
cunning, supplant honorable, moral and
n r intellectually strong men in the Obtainment
90 of place and power, that have within few
years come to light, show that great
deal of the lax morality and great deal
of the corrupt homage, and a great deal of
the undiseerning acquiesence in the practi-
ces and tricks of politics and politicians
that marked the times of Bacon, exists in
II this age and in this country. tits not be-
cause t.logic is a He and moral theories
q. shame" but because logic Is perverted to
gross sophistical uses, and because the
people too generally fail to appreciate and
s= patronize that which is genuine both in
logic and in morals, either through ignOr-
auce or through the demoralized. fayoritism=
that party begets. The power of Office,
With all its direct and indirect briberies,
peryades the politics of our elective sys-
2 21.. TEN like an atmosphere, and neither the
q standard of morals OF of intelligence is
high enough to keep thousands of those
who award:thesea offices frpm,LcOnsciOusly
or uncOnsciOusly, lreferring that which is
:. j., counterfeit in mind and. morals TO, that
q i which is genuine Lord Bacon, no doubt,
would preferred to have been a good as
well as asgreat man. Nature intended him
Tas such, as is proved in the fact that he
- yithstood the corruptions of his corrupt
times, and his even more corrupt associa-
tions. as long as he did. The pressure
upon his ambition, however, was so con-
q STAN. and 80 overwhelming that his great
moral foundation gave way, and that i'm.
nense intellect which had formed and FASH
,,fs Toned the very principles of true logic and
logical ethics, sunk to an utter moral aban-
donment of them, and struck hands with
the tenaiities ofthose piaeemen whose vo-
cation twas to perveft logic and ethics
+ for sorded ends.
=. Bis experience, then, we say, is the ex-
= perience of scores of our public men, in a
smaller way. We see public men in this