The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-11-21
ANOTHER RADICAL PURGArIoN.

That an attempt will be made in the next
| number of Democrats to enable the Radicals
to retain two-thirds majority in that body,
is not to be doubted. They resent, in adj
vance, the mere shadow of the executive veto
in the hands of Grant, the mere possibility
that some darling measure for extending their
usurpations and strengthening their hold
upon power may encounter an insuperable
check in the dissent of the new President.
| The tactics of this class of politicians never
change. The purgation of Legislative bodies
| has always been one of their favorite expedi-
ents. When the Radicals in the Thirty-Ninth
Congress conspired together to obtain abso-
lutte control, directly of the Legislative depart
ment, and indirectly of the whole government,
and deliberately unseated, under one fimsy
pretext or another, enough of their opponents
to accomplish this purpose, the proceeding, if
it may have surprised some. was certainly not
new. 1t was a secondhand trick, as old as
the Rump Parliament of England, and was
practiced by the Roundheads to carry out
their scheme of universalizing and perpetual
ing their power. These Roundheads, like our
Radicals, professed to belong to party
founded on "moral ideas" and their prac-
tees and professions harmonized about as
strikingly as the practices and professions of
the modern party of morality which has fol-
lowed the leadership of the cynical Stevens,
the avowed infdel and open adulterer, of the
heartless Bingham, the murderer of an
innocent woman, and of the constituencies
Butler, whose name is simply the index to
the sum of infamies. The forcible exclusion
of obnoxious Presbyterian members from the
House of Commons by the measure known as
'Pride's Purge" though more rude and fla
grant in form, was not more audacious and
usurpatory in effect than the methods by
which the Radicals have heretofore managed
to eliminate from Congress all but an insig-
nifcant remnant of the opposition, so that
they could pass whatever laws they pleased
without debate, override the executive veto,
and reduce the presidential authority to a
cypher. They are not the people to abandon
the use of such methods hereafter, when the
popular branch of Congress will contain
enonah Democratic members to make up
wards of one-third of its total number. This
fact, if permitted to continue, would compel
them to treat the views of the President with
a Difference to which Congress has long been
a stranger, and for which the enterprisiiIg
and thorough-going Radical legislator has
about as much relish as the devil has for holy
water. Should disagreement occur between
them and Grant-as upon some question i.
certainly must occur, unless he shall virtually
abdicate his presidential prerogatives and
responsibilities-he may find, if not singu-
larly destitute of tact, in the Democratic
third of the House an invincible outpost
which will laugh to scorn all their efforts to
break down his veto and destroy his execu-
tive independence. They are the last men to
forego the earliest opportunity to effect such
purgation of the House as will insure them
the same absolute mastery in legislation dur
ing the incoming administration which they
have held during the administration of John
son. They will doubtless try to initiate a
policy looking to this end at the next session
of the present Congress. Already, some of
the Republican papers, the St. Louis Demo-
crat the Chicago Tribune and the New York
Times, suspecting this intention and believ-
ing it to be injudicious, are advising against
it. But these papers, however much they
may have protested against Radical schemes
of usurpation, have always fallen in with the
usurpers as soon as those schemes were ac-
complished. 1t may be assumed, then, that
Radical purgation of the next Congress will
be attempted and that whatever is left of the
Republican organization will indorse the pur-
gators But will Grant and his supporters
patiently see the accomplishment of the high
handed measure VIII Grant consent to be
less potent in the government than SEN
tence of Wendell Phillips and joint resolu-
ton pushed by Sumner and Butler? Or will
he be disposed, after the Radicals have gone
through with their imitation of "Pride's
Purge" to offset it with an imitation of the
Cromwellian purge Events must tell.