The Richmond palladium. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1855-1875, 1868-04-09
THE EFFECTS OE IMPEACHMENT.

If the Senate convict the President,
the difference thenceforth between An
drew johnson and Teddy O'Flaherty
will be that the latter is eligible to Office
while the former can never again rise
even to the dignity of Alderman of q
village. An ex-President is said to
have been elected Roadmaster of his
town The rumor that Mr.. johnson
wonld again swing round the circle in
vindication of his course may express
his present intentions, but few speech
es to empty houses would cure him of
that distemper "The King is dead
Live the king"' will be the cry of the
people. The public interest will be
transferred instantaneously to the Hon.
Benjamin F. Wade and his new Cabinet,
that it will seem surprising that so in
trinsically insignificant an individual
as Andrew johnson could have occu-
pied attention so long, Or that such for
midable efforts were required to get rid
of him
Should impeachment succeed. Mr..
Wade will come into the Presidency by
operation of the Constitution instead of
by popular election. He was virtually
chosen for the Presidency by the Senate,
since the contingency of Johnson's re-
moval was in the mind of the Senate
when they chose him for presiding Off
Ger. He was elected more from a sense
of his fitness for the Presidency Of the
United States than from his superiority
| as presiding officer of the Senate. Mr..
Wade would give the country a vigor-
Gus administration, in harmony with the
laws and opinions of Congress. The
vast benefits of such an administration
can only be estimated by rejecting how
absolutely all the functions of Govern
| ment are blocked, and the country left
to drift without helm, by that system of
resistance to the laws and attempted
tyranny over Congress which Johnson
has styled "my policy
Reconstruction is arrested Labor,
the mother Of all wealth at the South,
IS unsafe, Capital avoids that region as
people would flee from the plague
The South is poorer by millions of dol
lars than when the war closed It can
not return to order and progress until
the broken down aristocracy and eman-
cipated freemen feel the protecting and
coercing hand of a humane but vigor-
Gus governme ent. This they would feel
xx,ftl I, L l.
Rebels will abandon their hopes Of ru-
ling the South. ''Kuklux" clans will
be broken up. The strife over the suff-
rage question would be superseded by
the quiet power of universal ballot,
which is universal peace. The whites
would take an active part in recon struc-
ton. State Governments, representing
the majority of all the people, and yet
administered by loyal men, acting un
der sound Constitutions, would apply
for admission to the Union and be ad-
mitted. The whole South would stop
swearing, boasting and wrangiing, and
go to work. Only in proportion as the
South works out it's own salvation can
it's chivalric nose be lifted from the
grindstone ALI that is needed to ac-
complish this is the immediate and GER
tain return to power of those Republi-
can principles which were vindicated
by the election, and betrayed by the
recreant administration of Andrew
j ohnson. Mr.. Wade's accession to the
Presidency, with the certainty that he
will be followed by Gen. Grant, would
give the South the certainty it needs.
Our systems of revenue and taxation
are almost in chaos. Mr.. Johnson's
whole attention has been devoted, not
to the appointment Of officers who would
enforce the laws and honestly collect
the revenues, but to secure satraps,
however rascally or incompetent, who
would sustain or pretend to sustain his
policy As. nobody but himself ever
sincerely believed in his policy, hypoc-
racy was the first qualification for an
office holder. Mr johnson has had no
time nor disposition to inquire whether
our revenue collectors were licensed
Government thieves; it has taxed all his
energies to hunt up politicians who
could be bought. He did not stop to
think that one whom he could buy with
an Office anybody could buy with money:
Hence, from one end of the land to the
other, departments of the revenue which
were honestly administered under Mr.
Lincoln have become sinks of corrup-
tion under Mr.. johnson. Al This rotten