The Republican journal., 1870-03-03

1t is now quite well understood that at
least one carpet-bag member of the House
a gentleman from South Carolina-is impli-
Gated in the sale Of West Point cadetshps
There is promise of full exposure, and the
public will soon know all about it. But the
most remarkable feature OF the thing to my
mind is-not that the carpet baggers should
sell their influence and their votes for such
sums as they can get, but that people should
wonder when they do so. Congress has de-
liberately imposed this set Of vile creatures
upon ten States of the Union. The recon-
struction laws have rendered any thing like
respectable representation impossible: they
have excluded from office every man in the
South who is fit to hold it, and made ten mill
ions of people the victims of unprincipled ad-
venturers. You cannot name to-day among
the carpet-bag members and Senators in Con-
gress a single man who could be elected to
any Office in the country i'll the North from
which he emigrated,t to fasten himself upon an
unwilling people through the lnstrumentality
of Congressional reconstruction. The Re
publicans in Congress are beginning to see
this, and to complain oft but it is too late.
AS Mirabeau said in the Convention of France,
when the Able Sieyes complained Of the eX-
tremes to which the revolutionists We're 60
ing, "My dear Able, YOU have loosed the
bull; do you think he will not use his horns ?''
Congress has CLOSED the BULL and he is
simply using his horns. There never was a
more dastardly crime committed against a
brave people than that which called the car
pet-baggers into existence, and filed the
halls of Congress with the mean wretches
who now represent the South Nor is the in
| jury confined to the South alone. The car
pet-bagger's vote counts for as much on a
| for off afin n1
country as the vote Of a member from New
York or Cincinnati and we have now twenty
such votes in the Senate and eighty in the
House-any one of them understandable az
tce for sale to the highest bidder the aggre-
gate forming an army Of rascaity sufficient
ly large to corrupt and befou the entire legis-
lation of Congress. Nor is there any prospect
of immediate relief The influence of these
men is constantly excited to prevent the eX-
tention of amnesty to those likely to prove
competitors for their succession. A general
removal Of disabilities would soon purify the
political atmosphere of the South but Con
gress never was farther from that sort Of
magnanimity than it is to-day. The South
ern delegations are solid against it, and are
likely to remain SO and to defeat any meas
ure of the kind.
So, repeat, the sale of cadetshps, though
a disgraceful thing. is not a drop in the grea
ocean of corruption. 1t is as nothing com
pared to the villainy and venality which are
inseparable from system which makes Sen
ators and Representatives out of men who
come here for the sole purpose of making as
much as possible out of their positions in
Congress. These facts may as well be look
ed squarely in the face, and the people may
as well make up their minds to accept tn,
disgraceful situation which party malice ha
forced upon them. 1t will be the work O
!, twenty years to "disinfectr the halls o
f National legislation, and remove from then
the impurities of Congressional reconstru c
ton. [Cincinnati Enquirer,
Maria Hill, arrested on suspicion of implicatio