Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1867-03-25
NIOurnfn1 Exhibition i'm Congress

The House of Representatives witnessed
yesterday pitiable spectacle. An old man,
trembling OIL the verge of the grave, claim
ing to be too feeble to deliver his own
speech, full of malice and bitterness, sOlicits
the ear OF the House to pour forth his venom
against an entire people. We shall take
another occasion to speak of the character
of Mr.. Stevens speech but we simply now
recur to the circumstances under which it
was delivered. No one, not even Mr..
Stevens himself, contemplates the likeli-
hood of his bill becoming law. 1t was in
trOduced and referred several days ago to
the committee of the whole, and Mr.. Stew
ems yesterday obtained an opportunity to
make speech upon it, which it were bet
ter for his tame he had never made. 1t may
be welcomed by few narrOw-minded ma
lignant ultraists, but it will be despised by
The noble, mourned over by the charitable,
and regretted by the patriotic, who will
feel that such an exhibition in the halls of
Congress, two years after the close of the
war, is a national dishonor. There are
men who believe, some of them honestly,
| that Mr.. Stevens has done his country good
service, and that in warning upon the Con-
stitution and enforcing military govern
ment on the South, he has entitled himself
to the national gratitude. But even these
will not defend the exhibition OF bad
mans spite and impotent resentment, and
especially when it is marked by the stage
| UrlCk0Ty OF an dUrOlG DOllGlCldu anu al dC-
complished demagogue.
MIR. Stevens was sick, or was heralded as
sick some days ago. But it was given out
that he proposed to make speech advocat-
! ing confiscation and assailing the President.
Prior to this he introduced his bill and had
| il referred to the committee OF the Whole.
| After the dispatches announcing his pur-
pose were scattered abroad, the bill itself
was sent, and was put in the hands of the
politicians of the country the uay before
! the speech was delivered. Mr.. Stevens
comes into the House, and after introduce
ing two or three other bills, showing his
usual yigor, appeals to the House to let him
be heard, probably for the last time, on his
bill, to which end he moves a recOnsidera-
ton of the motion referring his bill.
He begins his speech, reading from the
printed slips, but, apparently exhausted af-
ter reading few paragraphs, it is handed
ing it from the Clerks desk in his clear,
] IhighIy-finished style, and we suppose it is
to be telegraphed to the country as the fiDal
effort of ''the grand old man." who has eX-
hausted himself in his devotion to his coun-
/ try.
/ We remember that similar scene was
enacted some months ago. Mr.. Stevens
was represented as exhausted from disease.
| A great flourish of trumpets was made
about his final speech, and public eXpecta-
| tion was awakened and dramatic interest
created for the final words of the veteran
leader-words of bitterness and of malice
| also. But I" the old man eloquent" lived to
! 90 to Harrisburg, in order to show that
Gthere was more vitality in him than in
many a younger man." and survived even
his merciless slaughter there; and it has
not been many days since the Chronicle
commented on his enduring the protracted