The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-02-20


Mr.. Seward, who, with his "good man Fri
day" Thurlow Weed has been working his
wires mainly TO control the New York Custom
House and the other Federal spols and plunder
here without much concern for Mr.. Johnson.
When Mr.. Seward, on that deploTable Chicago
pilgrimage, proclaimed his adhesion to Mr..
Johnson, as President or King sharp eye
would have seen the danger Of such blarney
and turned the unscrupulous sycophant adrft.
But Mr. Johnson may still repair all his
damages in yielding gracefully to Congress.
veto of this bill, or anything like bad faith in
executing it, when it shall have been pro-
claimed law, will bring him before the Senate
as a high court of impeachment, where, for
certain 'high crimes and misdemeanors, " he
will be tried, convicted, condemned and re-
moved, and Chief Justice Chase, as presiding
Judge, will pronounce his sentence.
The case, with the South and with Mr.. John
son, is foreclosed and admits of no further APP
peal. His appeal to the people last fall,
though he would not believe their verdict has
settled the question. He ought then to have
acted upon the tailor's sound maxim that "a
stitch in time saves nine" But still he may
save himself and his administration in doing
the work cut out by Congress. The Southern
State rights coat of Calhoun is too high in the
waist and too short i'm the tail for the present
fashions, and to be "sound on the goose" it is
no longer the style to ''damn a nigger, any
nOW.' InlS laCL Is Degu1lng 10 De unQer-
stood by the Northern Democracy. They are
almost ready to admit that negro suffrage win
not destroy ''the Constitution of our fathers"
We must say, however, that upon this bill of
Congress the Democrats of both Houses have
adhered to the folly of the old woman who
persisted in sweeping the sea tide out of her
door till drowned in her cabin. But with all
their follies and obstinate laundering since
Beauregard's initial bombardment of Fort
tha 10 lxp
son, may still recover a solid position in a new
departure. Recognizing the settlement of the
Southern problem, they have only to fall in
with the prevailing public opinion upon the
bank question, the tax question, or the money
question in all phases, in order to rally the
masses of the people around them, North and
South, whites and blacks. With tho settle
ment of the Southern question and the negro
question, the money question will rule the day,
and upon this great question, as it stands, the
party in power is the party of the moneyed
aristOcracy arrayed against the great body of
the people. Here, then, leaving Southern re-
construction to manifest destiny"-here,
upon this money question, is the proper field
for the restoration of the Democratic party.
After a sixty years contest the negro has fairly
beaten them on every point; but, in " dropping
the nigger," and in reviving Old Hickory's
fight upon the money question, they may rise
again into power.
The Emperor Napoleon and the Empire.
From the World.
The tone of the Emperor Napoleon's speech
to the Corps Legislatif, of which the Atlantic
cable on Monday gave us a general summary,
forcibly brings before the mind the most inte-
resting question both for France and for the
world at large which remains to be answered
with regard to the Napoleonic Empire. That
! question concerns the probable stability of the
imperial throne upon the death of its present
occupant.
Heretofore Napoleon III, in his public ad-
dresses and letters has spoken not only as
one having authority, but as one whose autho-
! rity was alike indisputable and unshakable.
Both in the manner of his advent to power
and in the extraordinary results of material
greatness and prosperity which have been
secured to France by his administration of her
resources, there has been much, it must be
admitted, to explain, if not to justify, the
almost Messianic light in which the third
! Napoleon has seemed habitually to look upon
himself and the system he has been founding.
1t is excusable perhaps in the exiles of Cay
enne or of ClaremOnt, in the Republicans who
have been kept by the empire at hard
labor under the tropics, or in the princes
whom the empire has excluded from the Tuil-
cries, that the should persist in tracing
all the marvellous history of the last fifteen
years back to a single bloody day of December
on the Paris Boulevards. But foreign Observ-
ers be their political preferences what they
may, cannot be expected to accept so crude
and superficial an explanation of a system Of
phenomena so vast and so imposing. No i'm
partial student of French affairs, we presume,
now doubts that the overthrow of the French
Assembly in 1851, although it was directly
effected by the military power in the hands o.
the Executive, was substantially ratified by the
masses of the French people. 1t would argue
indeed but poorly, either for the intelligence
of France or for the fitness of Frenchmen t
govern themselves, could it be proved tina
they considered the hot-headed, impracticable
and despotic hydra which, under divers
forms, called itself an "Assembly" from 184$
to 1851, to be either a liberal or practicable
Government. Whatever else may be said o.
the change from the system of lS4S to the sys
TEN of 1852 it cannot truly be alleged that i
was for France a decline from greater to
less degree of constitutional liberty. And tn
strength which Louis Napoleon gradually ac
quired after the events of December, 1861 frs
as Prince President and then as Emperor mus
really be credited, we believe, not only to tn
restoration of order and the consequent pre-
gress of trade and industry under the nev
monarchy, but also to the serious and predom
nant impression of the majority of intelligeI
Frenchmen that there would be more of libert
as well as of prosperity to be lost than to b
gained by upsetting him.
During a reign now of nearly fifteen years
a reign longer than that of his immorti
uncle, and but little less long than that
Ip,1fs had