The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-03-30
A DysPEPIIc RADICAL.


: about Senator Sprague, of Rhode Island. III
seems suddenly to have emerged into th
region of the sober senses from that wild an(
prolonged political debauch which is briefly
known Is Radicslism. Radical policy begini
to sit as heavy on his stomach, az within tn:
bosom of Gloster, on the morn of Bos
worth field, lay the thought of his murdered
victims. The country, he Is satisfied, is In q
bad way, and its impending future is shrouded
in cloud of evil omens. This mental dyspep-
STA is bound to come to all Radicals in whom
the faculty of rational reflection is not extin-
guished. The alternatives are that and hope
less dementia. Those Radical papers which
are the most at a loss to know what to do
about Senator Sprague, have concluded to
resolve the perplexity by putting on a sar-
donic grin and jibing at him. The Cincin-
natl Commercial, for example, which says:
The young senator from Rhode Island is in
his prolonged wall 10 the Senate over the de-
| plorable condition of his country and country
| men, who will not be able 20 diagnose his case
without seeing him. The mans digestion is bad,
needs health lift-a bottle of the system reno
vstor, box OF liver pills, or q prescription of
blue mass.
Let the senator purge himself thoroughly, get
rid Of the black humors that trouble him. come
out West, trace the progress of civilization across
the continent the rapid occupation and SETTLE
ment Of land, the building up of cities and vii.
lagos, the construction of railroads, and read in
mems faces the faith they have in the future of
the great republic. and ne will go back to Wash
iDgton enlightened and encouraged and conscious
how small speck In the grand total are the
Providence Plantations.
But this sort of forced derision, topped off
with touch of the Elijah Pogram order
Of eloquence, invoking the spread eagle of
the boundless West, and (perhaps y an equally
boundless future, won't do-decidedly not. 1t
has been tried too often. The trick is now
equally Intellectual and stale, and we predict
that it will not go down generally even in the
far West, the chosen home of the brave and
OF the setting sun. Let the disciple of Elijah
Pogram, who gushes in the columns of the
Commercial, mark the prediction, if he can
bring his sublime fancy down to thought so
prosaic Some more solid argument is needed |
on which to bottom an assurance of political |
felicity and material prosperity than refer |
ence to distances over a geographical expanse
and to speculative possibilities in an indefinite
future. No country has, for thousands of
years, been SO much blessed with the elements
OF this argument as the continent of Africa.
But the vast spaces of interior Africa, even
those spots where nature has showered her
bounties most profusely, are as desolate and
unpromising now as they were in the DAYS of
the Pharaohs-perhaps more SO. The politi-
clans who have been engaged in the mad
work OF Africanizing the politics of this coun-
try have done their utmost to assimilate its
condition and its prospects to fate about as
snviable as that of Africa. This is the long
md the short of the distinguishing facts and
of Radical policy, with its profit
gate expenditures, its costly revenges, its
'uinous forays upon the country's wealth, its
restrictions upon commerce. And
Senator Sprague, recovering from the in
atuation under which this policy once
eemed to him fair and of splendid prom
Sc, begins at length to see it in its |
lideous reality. Call this change the ef-
ect of melancholic disorder, if you will
5ut what is that the poet says? That the
ye OF melancholy has fearful gift, strip
ing the distance of its fantasies and disrob-
ng the future of its illusions. Now, simply
o do this is to expose the utter hollowness of
II the Radical pretenses of promoting the
Telfare of the country. Melancholy is a mark
{ incipient disillusion, and Senator Sprague
J one of those Radicals who is undergoing the J
recess of disillusionization. In this state of
,ind he rises in the Senate and tells fatty
hat the country has come to after four years
mutual destruction in war, followed by four
ears of destruction and obstruction in nomi- G
al peace, and he roundly denies that all is =
right and lovely and cheering under the work. >
lgs OF Radical policy. He asserts that no in /.
rest is prosperous except such as are directly II
lstained by government aid. He, himself
he wealthiest of the New England manufac-
lrers, disputes the common notion that the
rotective tariff has caused them to prosper.
hat cornerstone in the political economy of
adicalism, though especially designed to
imulate skilled labor and enrich manufac-
ring capitalists in the East, it is confessed
this largest of its benefciaries, has only re- u
llted in bringing this species of enterprise to
stand-stil in that section. without opening
Nv chances for it with better conditions in
y other section. At the same time, he sees c
riculture depressed. And he does not be-
we that the wealth of the country has been
creased by the issue of eight hundred
ilions of paper money, and of two
ousand millions Of bonds. And he does
It believe that to force the currency up to
in value and to turn the national debt into IT IT
Id will help the laboring man and those SCI
10 must depend upon credit for capital 2.
I'd he does not believe that the sovereign 81
NEEDY for the ills of the poor is to multiply CO
} means by which the already rich may y
Ike themselves richer at the expense of the cdbi
lsses of producers and consumers. Indeed, at,
far is he carried in this dyspeptic and VII
optical vein that he actually denies the su-
riority of American mechanical skill