The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-28
THE DIsCORDANT DEMOCRACY.


From the NJ Y. Times.
The preaching of the Democratic Senator'S
and members scarcely harmonizes with their
practice. Having been neither moderate nor
discreet in their Congressional course, the
lesson they now read the party throughout
the country sounds oddly enough. They
have been hindrances, not helps, to practical
reform; they have made every question re-
lating to the South an occasion for fomenting
discomfort and assailing the validity and COM
pleteness of reconstruction. Even so cour-
teous a gentleman as Mr.. Cox could not allow
the Georgia debate to pass on Friday without
revealing the bitter hate with which his party
regard the legislative foundation on which
the new South stands.
The address issued by the Democratic
caucus Just held at Washington suggests for
the fall campaign the cultivation of quite
different spirit. Senators and Representa-
tives who have done their utmost to perpetu-
ate idle and mischievous controversies now
entreat their friends to ''let there be no dis
sensions about minor matters-no time lost
in the discussion of dead issues" What these
'dead issues" are, we are left to guess They
must refer to the war and reconstruction, or
the expression is virtually meaningless. But
why not say 80 explicitly? If the Democratic
Senators and Representatives really intend
that their party in the coming elections shall
acquiesce in the new order of things at the
South-in negro enfranchisement, and the
civil and political equality secured by the
recent constitutional amendments, why hesi-
tate to state the case in plain terms? Is it
that the Democratic legislators, remembering
how the philosophizing of the World touching
dead issues" has been received by the more
pronounced organs of the party, have hoped
to avert embarrassment and otfense by the
adoption of vague and polite phraseology?
If this has been the purpose of the caucus,
we can imagine the CONSERVATION created by
the address of Tammany. The pru-
dent generalization of the leaders at
istic bluntness of the leaders in New
York. Tammany may be unscrupulous, but
at least it is not hypocritioal. And the cir
cular of invitation sent forth by the Sachems
in connection with the Fourth of July festi-
val, shows that the spirit which dominated in
July, 1868, still desires to be the exponent
and ruler of the party.
While, then, the Senators and Representa-
tives blandly counsel the abandonment of
''dead issues" Tammany takes unusual pains
to invest these issues with living interest
and importance. According to Tammany, the
issues arising out of the Republican policy of
reconstruction are not dead-they slumber
only until the fall campaign begins. True,
the address declares that ''all questions con-
nected with the late civil war are properly at
an end But the context in reference to the
| new Southern governments makes it evident
that these are to be assailed whenever the
Democracy obtain power. '"The entire South
is without stable government, the Sachems
assert; and the task of restoring to the
South, sin all its completeness, the old gov
ernment," is designated as one of the
| prime duties of the party. What
''the old Government" signifies, in Demo-
cratic sense, and as applied to the South, we
cannot doubt. 1t means the overthrow OF
existing things, and the restoration of the
system which alone can make possible Demo
| cratic ascendency in the Southern States.