The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-12-07

TIE PORTER CORRESPONDENCE.
HrsroRr abounds with lamentaole proofs that
heroes have often wonderfully mean elements
or woful mental deficiencies interviewer with
their fighting qualities. Men may win bril-
liant battles by sea or by land and still be
wanting in the most essential elements of
true manhood. Napoleon the First, with all
his great intellectual endowments was SO
painfully deficient in moral qualities that he
sceroely knew the difference between right
and wrong. Modern English critics of the
Duke of Wellington denouuce him as
stupid, pig-beaded, narrow minded
man, despite his success as a
soldier. The great English hero of the
last century, the Duke of Marlborough, has
become more notorious for his avarice than
for his victory at Blenheim. One of the
greatest of English naval heroes was tried,
found guilty, and ignominiously condemned
for perpetrating gigantic fraud upon the
brokers Of the London Stock Exchange. This
list of proofs that exalted intelligence, a high
sense of honor, and strict rectitude do not al
ways go hand in hand with skilled valor might
be indefinitely extended; and Vice-Admiral
Porter's correspondence has furnished evil
dence that even American heroes are not
uniformly habilitated in an iron clad armor Of
prudence, rectitude, and unselfsh patriot
ism. The best defense of Porter letter to
Welles is to be found in the fact that at the
time it was written the feeling of mutual jea-
lousy between the army and navy, which had
gradually increased with each new combined
operation of land and naval forces, had
reached eliminating point; but Porter,
for obvious reasons, cannot put in this
plea, and the line of defense he has
adopted-of first denying all recollection ef
the authorship of the offensive letter, then
publishing a series of extracts of question
able appropriateness from his private diary
and finally acknowledging that he wrote the
ill-starred epistle, but that the whole tenor
of it's contents is Numerically opposed to his
real sentiments now and at all former times
is altogether untenable. We do not consider
that the President should lose his faith in
human nature because an ambitious oommo-
dore who toadied to Welles in the days of
his power should now toady to the dispenser
of admiralties, in spite of the harsh things
said in 1866. Grant ought by this time to
know that the office-seeking world swarms
with men who not only 'crook
the pregnant hinges of the knee,
that thrift may follow fawning,"
but undergo the most extraord-
nary mental, moral, and physical gyrationsto
climb the ladder of ambition. He should not
lose his faith in human nature on account of
any possible exhibition by hs train of Office
seekers of high or low degree. He should be
prepared to expect from them succession of
the meanest and most despicable devices that
unprincipled courtiers can invent; but at
the same time he should never forget that
beyond the miasmatic official atmosphere
that Immediately surrounds him an immea-
surable expanse of pure patriotism and IN
sullied integrity can be found among the
great body of the American people. AS to
Porter, we can scarcely blame the President
for resolving, like Othello, ''never more
be officer of mine;' but no summary judg-
ment should he pronounced against 40, 000,0 600
of citizens on account of any conceivable
peccadillo of the office-holding or Office
seeking fraction of this great mass of pa
triotic Humanity. Practically, the Porter cor
respondence will dispose of the writer's pre-
tensions to the position of Admiral of the
American Navy. It is very probable that
the Office will be abolished by Congress, and
it is clearly apparent that Porter is not
proper man to hold it.