The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1867-02-05
An ARTICLE THArWILL DO.

4 Us Senator Sketched to the Life
Garrett Davis as seen by an APPre-
eiaIiye Observer.
We need hardly say that the follow
ing editorial article is from the Cincin-
natl Commercial. 1t is in the peculiar,
and, we may add, most readable style
of some of that papers best efforts:
The protracted travail and labor of
the Kentucky Legislature to deliver
itself of United States Senator, re-
suited, after all, in a miscarriage. Gar
rett Davis was not the child it proposed
to bring forth. There is universal dis
appointment over the result. The DEM
ocrats, the Conservatives, the Republic
cans are dissatisfied. Every body is
unhappy. The Legislature must have
been reduced to a condition bordering
on imbeciiity when it relaxed its Iabors
and confessed its exhaustion by produ-
cling Davis.
Was there no avoiding such a calam-
ity? Even Lazarus would have been a
more hopeful sign of life. With his
patriarchal flow of hair, his befrilled
and bejeweled linen, and his benignant
face, bourgeoning with the fatness of
oil and of corn, the courtly old gentle
man would have made a rather striking
parsonage in the Senate chamber. II
Kentucky insisted on sending n fossil
to the National Congress, she might at
least have favored the country with n
good looking one. AS a figure-head,
Powell Is incomparably superior to
Davis; Harding would have been an
Improvement, and the surviving hero
of the River RaisIn would have eclipsed
them all.
The hopeless stagnation of Kentucky,
however, Is represented in the election
of Davis. He is "A political stick-in-the-
M III
plished facts, and the great social up
heaving and oyerturning of the past
six years Belonging to the age of sIa-
very, his political, ethical and social
theories and prejudices squared to that
institution, he is incompetent to deal
with the new condition of things, or to
suggest by what processes Kentucky is
to be set forward in 8 new and brighter
career of physical and intellectual ac-
uvity. The selection of such man to
represent her in Congress, is sign and
token that Kentucky is to be hamper
ed and weighted with the old clogs
which kept her back in the race for
pre-eminence in agriculture, manufac-
lures, trade and commerce.. Favored
with u genial and healthy climate fer
tile soil, unknown mineral wealth, wa
ter-power and navigation beyond most
OF her sister States, she has seen them
spring up from the wilderness TEEN
markets of the world wealth of pro-
ducts, of skilled labor and husbandry
that she has never approXimated. She
owes her siNth-rRte position among the
States to just such men as her Legisln-
ture now sends to the Senate for six
years to come.
If, however, it was the purpose of the
Kentucky Legislature to afIlict the
country with garrulOus and intoler-
able bore, il has succeeded. Davis will
be to the Senate what the thorn was in
the side of the apostle, perpetual ag-
Sravation, causing unlimited wear and
tear OF patience, and protracting the
session by his tedious and often-in-
tiicted harangues months beyond the
time 1t would otherwise adjourn. That
and nothing more. kentucky could
not have sent to the Senate a man of
absolutely less influence with its mem
bers or the country at large, He is
notable only for n "weak, washy, ever
lasting Hood of words. He can sue
coed in emptying the galleries and the
noor of listeners sooner than any man
ever sent to Washington. When he
rises to speak it is a signal for general
scramble for hats and individual adj
journment, and when he sits down the
leaden-visaged President and the nm
happy official reporter are the only
victims remaining to catch the last
words. lie burdens the Congressional
Globe with stOlid columns of speech
that no rational being within forty
miles of even so lively an affair as Il
Thursday night prayer meeting was
ever known to read. And to reflect
that there are six years of him settled
ike nightmare on the country, is the
most cheerless perspective which the
human mind can project into the
doubtful future.