Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1870-04-01
GRANT As A LOBBYIST.

Grants efforts to lobby the st. Domin-
go treaty through the Senate is disgusting
the better portion of the party that elect
ed him. There are those among them who
openly declare that the rule lately adopted
by the House of Representatives, that
persons seeking to corrupt legislators
should be excluded from the floor, gale
ries, and cloak-room, ought to be made
by the Senate to apply to President Grant.
1t is a gross though covert form of cor
ruption for a President to solicit votes in
the Legislature. 1t is implied, if not ac-
tually expressed, that Executive favors
VIII reqGite compliance with Executive re-
quests. This is the understanding, as ev-
erybody knows. The large pecuniary in
terests involved in the st. Domingo job
makes the Presidents zeal in It the
more unseemly. He might, at least, have
learned discretion from his late implica-
ton in the gold conspiracy. The general
corruption which Radicalism has brought
into every branch of the public service is
frankly confessed by the New York Ma
ton, one of the ablest Radical journals
in the country, which, in the course of its
remarks on this letting down of the Ex
ecutive, says:
'sFOr its recommendations on the larger
questions of public policy Congress does
not seem to care a straw, and takes no
pans to conceal it. Don't bother me
with your views about Cuba, or st. De-
mingo, or the tariff Congress seem to
say to it; when are you going to give my
| mar that place in the custOmhOuse 2 1t
was hOped-as we pointed out two or
| three weeks agO--that Gen. Grant would
have resisted this dictation when he first
came into office. He then had an ad-
mirable chance of doing it successfully {;
but, partly owing to bad tact and partly
| to bad management, twas suffered to pass
away. Since then, every attempt to re-
| cover the lost ground has been failure !;
and the tide rises higher and higher. In
the few cases in which he has of late fol-
lowed his own better judgment, such as
the appointment of the Marshal in this
district, it has been almost by stealth. He
now appears to have given up the struggle
and accepted his fate, and goes down
to the capitol to make what terms he
can with the victors, in other words, tC
bargain with the Senators, and, we may
be sure, to bargain most with the corrupt
and unprincipled, for it is they who viii
be most exacting and hardest to satisfy
about the terms on which he will be per
mitted to perform duty which the con
stitution entrusts to his discretion. o.
course, this is an open confession tina
not merely is the Senate's consent neces
sary for confirmation but for nomination
and that it has in reality added on to it
legislative functions the larger portion o
the executive functions. We shall sa,
little of the humiliation to which th,
President exposes himself and his Office b,
this step, or of the danger of the prece
dent he is here establishing. We sincere
ly trust he may yet see the improperly o
the new move, and go back to the Whit
House and stay there, and employ th
hours which would be spent in bargainin
at the capitol, to the loss of his own dig
nifty and self-respect, and the still furthC
+ degradation of the public service, i
working for q reform of the whole sy'
| TON, -