The Plymouth weekly Democrat. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1860-1869, 1869-04-22

what. in q POLITICAL point OF view, may De
considered successes, is that, from the be-
ginning, the party was founded upon no
liked principle or purpose. Of course,
there was the single end in view, the at
taiument of power; but how this power
was to be reached, and, above all, how it
was to be held when once in hand, has
been dependent from the start upon the
happenings of the hour. From the be-
ginning, the party plan has been to cast
its net in bOundless sea, the surface OF
which only could be seen, trusting to
chance that every drag would bring to
shore few more fishes and, perchance, a
few floating loaves Consequently, pretty
much every thing that has come into the
net has been SO much gain. Those to
whom the whole Of life is but lottery
count themselves not less lucky when
they chance to find a bill or coin lying in
the street than when they win by gam
bling on the board or table, or by risking
in rattle 1t is not the strangest thing in
the world that series of successes OF this
sort should lead the gamblers to believe
at last that they are really engaged In
reputable business founded upon SUBJ
stantial and respectable basis.
Hence, we arc ready for the howl of in
diguation which will rise from the rank
and file of the Republican party when we
tell them that their party begun and has
proceeded from the beginning as simless
of purpose as it has proved itself to be
devoid of principle. Yet we all remember
the derisive laughter with which that
party, from one end of the country TO the
other, greeted President Johnson, when
that faithful public servant announced
that he, at least, had policy" With
the Republican party "my policy was
the great joke of the century. The idea
that man should have in mind some def
mite plan for the restoration, not the re-
construction, Of the Union which four
years OF hard fighting had shaken, but
not shattered, and that he should tx his
plan upon such supposed surehold as the
Constitution, which the Republican party
had already ignored as something too
definite, restrictive, and positive for pur-
pOseless people, was so immensely
facetious that even the grave Tribune was
periodically funny thereover. To men OF
no purpose, plans founded upon funda-
mental law and the irrevocable require
ments of constitutions are of no account
whatever. Those who wander in the dark
take no heed Of distractions in the way,
or, at best, they blindly put Cut their hands
to brush those distractions aside, or to
teach them so as TO avoid and get around
them. It was q source of never failing
amusement to the late Thaddeus Stevens,
the unprincipled leader of the purposeiess
party, that there were but two men in the
entire party who believed the Recon
struction Acts to be constitutional, and
these men were characteristically classed
by the great moral reformer as "twO
damned FOOLS"
And yet this reconstruction business is
the only thing in which the Republican
party seems to have proceeded with a
purpose. That purpose was not the res
toration of the Union, nor even, as it ap-
peared for a while, the reconstruction of
the Union in such manner as to turn ten
States into outlying territories, 10 be ruled
by military satraps. There was no plan
beyond the vague intention of somehow
using the situation, from week to week,
and from month to month, for the advan-
tage of the party. The history of the past
four years shows that, so far as recon-
struction is concerned; nothing has been
reconstructed but reconstruction itself
That process has been pursued with q
persistence which has kept the party busy
The doings of one session of Congress have
been undone or done over again by the
next session of the same Congress, and the
so called legislation of one Congress has
been supplemented to the very verge of
notification by the succeeding Congress
A patch has been pinned to the Constitu-
ton only to be overlaid by another patch
cut from the same shOddy. States have been
admitted to representation in Congress
only to raise the question how they can
De turned out again. The negro has been
elevated only to be noisy, troublesome
pest To his civil creators, since the pur-
pOseless party only wanted his vote, and
took no forethought Of what was inevita-
bic, that if Sambo was fit to vote, Sambo
would deem himself fitted to hold Office.
In all this wild soaring after the indefinite
and deep diving after the unfathomable,
and with reconstruction reconstructed till
the very word is subject for ridicule, the
purposeless party has never proposed a
single plan for relieving the country of
the enormous difficulties which now
ovreshadow and which may over
whelm parties and people alike in
one common ruin. Nothing has been
suggested which looks to the reduc-
ton of the gigantic debt which the pur-
poscless party has fastened upon the ma
ton. The vast army of blood sucking
place-hOlders has not been cut down by
~ hAUNh a. % DidtOOu. i 6,ReQ-
of reform in the civil service narrows
down to fresh schemes for supporting the
friends and relatives of the party in pow
er from the public treasury. The foreign
relations of the country have been so
mixed and muddled by the purposeless in
competents who have undertaken to man.
age the same that we are liable any Mon
day morning to be pushed into a war with
Great Britain, and to tumble into a war
with Spain. Congress does not know
whether it is safest to adjourn or to con-
tinue in perpetual session. Even the
means for promoting the mere ends of
party are nearly exhausted, and the wants
of the people have not been considered.
This is the position of the purposeless
party to-day, or of the party with a sim
gle purpose, that of plumber
1t was eminently fitting that this pur-
pOseless party should elect purposeless
Presidents man who did not even know,
when he was nominated, to which party
he belonged, and who boosted that he had
p" no policy" 1t was this, indeed, which
mainly commended him to the party
which hoped to mould him, and which
has partly succeeded in turning him into
their own purpOseless path of doing as
much as may be for the party, and the
party's friends and relatives, and as little
as need be for the nation. How long will
II be before the purposeless President and
his purposeless followers will find them
selves IN a position where something
must be done, and the people discover
that these are not the competent men to
do 1t ?-Neao York Citizen, 1Oth.