The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-06

the truth, still it has never been accused of
wilful attacks upon American character. Acts
are visible things. DEGREES cannot be forged.
Taxation reaches everywhere. The electors
all read, they hear what is going on, they see
what they have to pay, they feel the fall in all
shares, the distrust of American bonds, the
confusion in all business operations like that
which accompanied the Gold-Room swindle,
when no man in the State could tell what he
was worth for an hour together, and still they
are Indifferent 1t may be said that
such a condition of affairs must cure
itself; but that has been said at any time this
ten years, and it has only become worse and
worse What is to cure whole people who,
with their eyes open, tolerate corruption in
their own servants at their own cost; who
with a Puritan training, bear unjust judges;
who, to take the most favorable of conceiv-
able views, believing in their judges, believ-
ing in their members, believing all the
charges false, eagerly support journalists
capable of such monstrous lying? Their
self-interest will not cure them, for their
self-interest is already on the side
of honesty. They are not repudiating
to avoid taxation, but suffering taxation
that plunderers may flourish. Their patriot
ism will not cure them, for their patriotism
never was more signslly manifested than du-
ring the war, and yet they are allowing the
word American" attached to any security to
depreciate it 80 or 40 per cent. Their leaders
are not in fault, for they elect them. Their
press is not in fault, for it tries to rouse them
They have no excuse of an ignorance which
may be removed, or a delusion which may be
dispelled, or a prejudice which may disap-
pear They know the facts, and knowing
tolerate them; and their tolerance is for all
moral purposes completely in form of vice
which no State recorded In history has ever
tolerated without experiencing its inevitable
retribution-anarchy ending in one way or
another in government from without.
-
PROTECTION IN A PASSION.
From the ". y World.
The protectionists of Philadelphia are in a
bad way since the Schenck abortion, and,
what is worse, they are losing their tempers.
They scold like very "drabs'-meaning no
poor pun on neutral-tinted garments. The
latest effusion of bilious Billingsgate that we
have seen is from Forneys Press of day or
two ago, where writer with the suspicious
initials of II. G. B. pours out his full venom
on Mr.. Bryant, because in his discourse on
Verplanck he stated the historical truth that
his deceased friend, being man of educa-
tion and enlightened intelligence, was in
modified form free trader II. G. 3. writes
thus of the author of "Thanatopsis" and the
translator of the 'Iliad:"-"Mr. William
Cullen Bryant, of the New York E0eRing
Post, is a very respectable old gentleman
and very good poet, but, as might reason
ably be supposed, very poor political econo-
mist or social philosopher" This, being in
terpreted, means that Mr.. Bryant not only
has not become by regular course of study
convert to extreme protection, but probably
never read one word of those huge volumes of
ill-digested facts and unintelligible doctrines
that are supposed to be studied in Philadel-
phia. We have not the most remote idea who
H. G. B. is, but we take him to be some
waspish, elderly, rather dyspeptic old-line
Wing, turned radical, with furnace out of
blast or a coal mine where there is strike
sister city. Judge Kelley by constant elo-
cution relieves himself of much pent-
up fury, and is by far the best
tempered of the party All else are
in state of ill-concealed chronic combustion
and especially so is II. G. B. He tells us the
revenue legislation for 1888, for which Mr.
Verplanck was to certain extent responsible,
cost MIR. Clay his election in 1874 Now it
seems to us, looking back coolly on this mat
ter, that inasmuch as the tariff of 1924
protective measure-was in full force in 1874,
| it is rather illogical to search for causes of
| Wing discontinue in the free-trade or semi
free-t trade policy of eleven years before! Mr..
| Clay's defeat was due to his
course on the Texas question and to
the corrupt coalition of abolitionists
and Democrats-of which Sumner was the
first fruits-in the Northern and Eastern
States. 1t would not do for an anti-slavery
agitator of this our day-a radical Republi-
can, an admirer of Lincoln, and believer
in the fifteenth amendment-all of which
H. G. b. no doubt is-to attribute what he
considers the great calamity of Mr.. Clay s
discontinue to its true cause. The gentle
evening of the honored life of ''that very re-
spectacle old gentleman" Mr.. Bryant, will
not, we imagine, be agitated by these effu-
sions of tariff malice