The Cambria freeman. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938, 1869-03-11
The inaugural Address.

In another column will be found President
Grants Inaugural Address. 1t is brief and
is not remarkable for either purity of style
or originality Of thought. Unlike fimilar
addresses from Washington to Lincoln, it
betrays no want of selfconfdence in his abil-
ity to bear the heavy burden which has been
imposed upon him, and in that respect is in
bad taste. Gen. Grants professions of re-
trenchment and reform are common to all
such productions. Indeed, an Inaugural
Address without declaration of rigid econ
Omy and vigorous retrenchment would be
ike the play of Hamlet with the part of
Hamlet left out. Gen. Grant Is no doubt
sincere in this regard, but we look upon
Congress as so essentially and hopelessly cor
rupt that, in order to carry out his honest
purpose, he will have to resort to very lib
eral exercise of the veto power. That he
will avail himself of this constitutional right,
so much denounced by the radicals, is not to
be doubted, because he brandishes the veto
power in the very face of Congress. AS to
the manner of paying the public debt he is
heart and hand with the bondholders, and
therein differs materially from the views of
many of the prominent leaders Of his own
party, for Senator Morton and other radicals
in the Senate, and Gen. Butler and others of
his faith in the House, have peclared within
the last two weeks that to pay the debt in
gold was no part of the contract.
General Grants theory OF plan Of paying
the public debt is as novel as it is ridiculous.
He seems to think that nature has literally
Implied us with the means of doing so, and
hat all that is necessary is to dig sufficient
quantity of gold and silver out of the bowels
of the Rocky Mountains, transport it over
the Pacific Rail Road to the Philadelphia
mint, and the question is solved at once
The debt Of no nation in .he world was ever
paid in this way, and General Grant will
discover before his term of Office expires that
the public debt of the United States cannot
be liquidatsd by any such process. A care
ful reading of any treatise on Political Econ
omy will very speedily cure him of this de
llsion.
We did not expect from General Grant an
unqualified endorsement of the universal
negro suffrage amendment When he ac-
c3pted the Chicago nomination he also gave
his adhesion to the platform, which declared
ia language not to be mistaken that the
question of suffrage in the Northern States,
at least, was to be left exclusively to their
own control. 1t. IS not in character with the
honor of gallant soldier thus to repudiate
his own deliberate act But in this respect
Gen. Grant only follows in the footsteps of
his'party, and both have kicked the platform
from beneath them. While he expresses
the "hope" and "desire'' that the right of
Suffrage may be conferred upon all the ne
groes in the North, Gen. Grant has not one
word to say in favor of removing the politi-
cal disabilities which stand between twenty
five thousand intelligent white men in the
South and the ballot-box. As the majority
Of the popular vote in his favor was made
up entirely of the negro vote which he re-
ceived in the South, it is fair to conclude
that his hope" and ''desire" on this subject
spring from lively sense of gratitude for
H
In his address Gen. Grant is painfully 81
lent on the subject Of protection to American
Industry. This is certainly a poor way of
backing up his friends and ought to create
howl in the camp Of the protectonists. But
the most noteworthy feature in the whole
address is. that from the beginning to the
end of it he does not once make use of that
t.ereotyped but much abused word loyalty.
Nor does he make the slightest allusion to the
"slavehoders' rebellion" that prolific and
inexhaustible source Of radical buncombe.-
These are offences not to be condoned by
loyal league association.
We now have Gen. Grants professions.
Let us patiently wait for his practice.
CRAMPS CABINET.