The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-04-03

| The New York Tribune has been accus-
toned, when denounced for making itself the
vehicle of malignant and infamous falsehood,
to initiate the policy of captured terrapin,
which consults safety by drawing in its head
and remaining stolidly ensconced in its shell.
But this strstagem does not always succeed,
even with the Tribunes testidudinal prototype.
Boys, more inquisitive than tender, as boys
are constitutionally prone to be, will some
times heap live Goals on the dorsal armor of
the animal until it thrusts its head out and
scrambles desperately to escape from the
fiery torment The Tribune has undergone
a similar infection; similarly, its dorsal cal
losity proved at length unequal to the occasion;
similarly, it was at last compelled to emerge
FROM its pachydermatous retreat and ply its
SPRAYING feet. Whereupon, clearing around
with its muddy eyes, it opened its cavernous
jaws, and spake in these words:
There has been 90 much discussion as to the
truth Of certain dispatch published little while
ago in the Tribune, describing q rebel demonstrs-
ton in New Orleans, that we may as well state
that it came to rs from Mr.. Thos. W. Codway, Of
that city. and we beg leave to refer to him any
body who wants further information respecting It.
There would be some atonement in this
confession for the atrocious calumny to which
it refers, if it were marked by the explicitness
and righteousness of true repentance. But
there is nothing of the kind about it. There
is no more merit in it than there is sainthood
in the devil when, under the throes of dys-
pepsia, he vomits up an indigestible piece of
sin. 81. ~. -..4 -
The ''much discussion as to the truth of
certain dispatch emanating from Parson
Conway, and in which Gen. Hancock, Mr.
Davis, and the fremen Of New Orleans were
Jumped together as parties in ''rebel dem
onstration," is one of the Tribunes character
istic fancies. No doubt the Tribune people
think the use of such phraseology a clever
way to get around corner out of an ugly
predicament. But it won't do. There has
been no discussion as to the truth of the
dispatch. Every man in his proper senses
who knew anything of the circumstances in
which it originated, knew it to be lie in the
first instance. No intelligent and truth
full journalist in the country has
regarded it in any other light than that of
specimen of partisan calumny. The Tribune
published it with sensational emphasis pre-
cisely in time to give it effect in the New
Hampshire election. The people of that
paper knew as much then about the relia-
bility of its New Orleans correspondent, the
q Reverend" Thomas w. Conway, as it can
have known since. For this brilliant orna-
ment of radical carpet-baggery has not been
brio 81
several years. His unscrupulous malignity
and malignant mendacity lave been again
and again exposed, and the exposure could
not bave escaped the notice of the conductors
of one of the leading journals in the North
1t is shameful in the Tribune to ego back
on" Parson Conway. by washing its hands
publicly of responsibility for calumny which,
for a partisan purpose, it had been as ready
to indorse as to disseminate. Conway has
acted simply as its Jealous confederate in the
work of partisan elimination. AS radical
organ, it cannot dispense with correspondents
of his class Whenever its party is threat
ened with discontinue in Northern elections,
the Tribune is expected to come
to the rescue with a forlorn hope
of mendacious correspondents. 1t has never
yet disappointed this expectation. Hence its
periodical eruption of ISLANDERS against the
South, which have come to constitute the
very pabulum of radical cohesion and ascen-
dency in the North. Conway has richly con-
tributed to this food through the columns of
the Tribune. Now that the nature of
the vile business as far as he is concerned
has been exposed, the Tribune coolly hands
him over to the crucifxion of public obloquy.
A more ignominious instance of desertion
and betrayal is not to be found in the annals
of criminal confederation. The Tribune's
relation to Conway has been that which a
guilty receiver of stolen goods bears to the
thief who deposits them. Fidelity in such
cases is heroic virtue among the thievish
fraternity. The Tribune's treatment of its
confederate slanderer is below the moral code
of ordinary rascaldom.