The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-08-05
GREELEY's LAST.


From the ". J.. HOFtd,
II. G. has beer on what he, no doubt with
entire accuracy, calls hurried journey
through Virginia-which is to say that he
''passed and repassed along her central line
of railway"-and straightway, with exquisite
modesty. roundly lectures on their absurd
style of farming those Nirgnians who cult
vate crops whereof II. G.. himself knows
nothing at all. He candidly confesses he
never saw any other part of Virginia before,
save the outskirts and the capital, and yet
after ''this hurried journey does not scru-
pie to abuse men who have been reared on
that soil and wrought with it all their lives.
Nothing could more aptly typify that swollen
self-importance and busy meddling which
make the life of radicalsm than this. To
instruct the trained soldier in his ramparts
and ravelins. the divine in his exegesis, the
lawyer in his law, the planter at his plough
these are the pet devices and manifestations,
the Heaven-born mission, as it were of those
prying, childish, unmanlike philanthropists
and sages that have descended as locusts on
these unhappy latter times, and, by their as
sduous tearing down of everything in order
to build it up better than the Lord made it in
the beginning, have plunged us into Gimme
rian darkness and no end of uncertainty,
tribulation, and sorrow \ man takes a hur-
ried railway trip through a great State, and
forthwith rushes off home to indite two NOR
tai columns in rebulle of the entire agricultu-
raj system of that State What difference is
it if that mans name is Horace Greeley or
John Jones, the thing is an absurdity.
But II. G. used his eyes. Very well, then,
let him tell what he saw, and so far his lucu-
brations may have value; but it is a shameful
thing in public leader, and yet a thing inhe-
rent in radicalism, to generaliZe instances
into rules. to make one individual deed of
violence the habit of a whole people, to de-
clare one scurvy farm the typeof all farms in
whole State. This is what II. G. does. and
therefore, is detestably wishy-washy when he
does it. When he tells us III these two col
umns that II traversed miles of superb white
and black oak, where nearly half the trees
would square two feet, making admirable
ship-timber:" and that on each
of the three (out of the
many crests (of iron ore) | visited, there
were millions of tons ready to be
shovelled up and carted off like any seaside
bank of pebbles. 1t is said to be pure yield
ing 80 to 20 per cent. of metal of excellent
quality" and that there are mineral proper
ties now to be bought in Virginia for prices
which will be quadruped in ten years though
nothing be done to develop them; while, il
they be opened and worked with the requisite
knowledge and capital. the value of some viii
be increased a hundred-fold.' When he says
these and other things of the kind, there i,
room for belief-the man is telling what hC
saw; but when it comes to vague buncomb,
in the shape of teaching a tobacco-plante
how to plant his crop, Fl. G. is H. G., anl
there is nothing more to be said about it. II
prate and to intermeddle is of the essence o
radicalism, always was, and always will be.