The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-08-21
The Antiquity of Radical CriminaIity.

From the Washington National LteIitgencer.
There is mysterious but inevitable affinity
between atrocity which is systematic, and the
enthusiasm naturally attendant upon pseudo
religious sentiment. False religion no sooner
allies itself with the passions than it inspires
rehnements OF wrong, and invents perVersions
of conscience; and such crime no sooner grows
methodical than it persuades itself that it is
sanctiied by the Deity. This unnatural and
terrible combination of things occupying the
extreme poles of the constitution of man, is
undoubtedly the sign of a stage of sin, at
which the conscience, debauched by the pas
siOns, wantons through the mind. Ages of
blood, OF torture, of hypocrisy, and of impos-
tuTe, in all climes, and among all peoples,
testify with bitter intensity the excuse of the
atheists OF the last century for the unwarrant-
able charge, that religion itself was an evil,
and the priestly office the curse of mankind.
The universally of this hateful reciprocity
between deliberate crime and materialized re-
ligion demonstrates its seat, independently of
conditions deep in the heart of man. The
Unsuitable greed, the merciless humiliation of
the weak, the remorseless cruelty of those
who 60 under the name of Radical toward the
Southern people, is charitably and generally
imputed to excess of loyalty, Incorporate
patriotism, and fanatical devotion to ideas, all
grounded in our own age, country, institu-
tiOns, and political education. But it is most
of the rise, the outbreak, the conduct, and
the fall of the rebellion have had very little
influence on the dreadful spirit which
has covered ten States with gene
raj calamity, inflicted gratuitous sorrow upon
every individual inhabiting them, aud actually
tended TO coerce them back into barbarism.
The age and country did, indeed, furnish the
words wherewith the cant-Without which the
tongue OF common speech would dissolve the
fatal selt-delusiOn-was forged but the cant
itself, ancient as falsehood, was the same
which detiles all history with its abominable
Installations from mingled murder and bias
| phemy. The gigantic instance of our own
| very day cannot be- distinguished in substance
| from one which disgusts us across tract of
time beginning hundreds of years before
! Christ. Ii the following were a fable, who
| but the radicals of to-day would be recognized
as figured by It'll
In Persia there is a mountain on whose side,
! three hundred feet from the plain, is carved in
the solid rock the celebrated inscription in
| which Darius commentaries his exploits in
subduing, as ours in Furnishing, a rebellion in
his empire. Modern penetration has resolved
the strange characters, and Interpreted the
etigies of the king and his captive Sitran-
tachmes, the rebel, stands abject, a symbol of
the subdued rebellion, before the proud and
successful monarch, while overhead figure
represents the great God-Ormuzd-to the
Persians. Below is the inscription. This is
some of it,
"By the grace of Ormuzl, am king OimuZl
| has granted me empire. OTmu2d brought help
| TO me. BY the grace OF OrmuZd my troops eu-
| tiTCly defeated the Rebel army. and took 81
trautachmes and brought him before me- Tnen
l cut on hls nose and ears. He was kept chained
al my door. All the kingdom heheld him. At
terwsro | crucified him at Arhela. # Thou
whoever mayst be king hereafter, exert thysell
TO put u0Wn Is ing the man who may be herol'
cal, him entirely destroy"
This inscription, without its frightful sim
piinty, is written in every measure of the
radical party, and the country has been con
Yulsed Tor three years by their attempts to
inject ii into the Constitution of the United