The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-01-23

THE BROOKS S-HASzINGS Affair.
The Brooks Hastings affair, one phase of
which has recently been under consideration
before Congressional Committee, is matter
in itself of little moment, and it deserves
notice only because it incidentally involves
question of Importance to all newspaper pro-
prietors and to the public. Mr.. Hastings, as
editor of the New York Commercial Adosr-
ttser, published in that journal sundry
charges against Mr.. Brooks, New York city
member of Congress, the gist of which was
that his official position was incidentally made
a source of private gain. Mr.. Brooks stoutly
denied these charges, and if he had been con-
tent with such denial on the floor of Con-
gress there would have been no special cause
of complaint, for the people have
become quite familiar with personal explana-
tions involving mutual ordinations and re-
examinations between editors and Congress
men. And, really, Brooks ought to have been
satisfied with the chance of having his dia-
tribes against the offending editor embalmed
in the dull records of Congressional debates
and telegraphed to every portion of the
Union. But he thirsted for more resplen-
dent vindication. Impressed with an over
powering sense of the ajestic dignity of an
M. c., he was determined that the offender
should be summoned post-haste to the Capt.
tol, there to answer for the awful crime of
impugning the holy sanctity which
presumably permeates its official deni-
zens. Mr.. Hastings, being a somewhat
notorious politician, as we'll as an
editor, is not generally supposed to be much
Of a saint, and if there is any foundation for
the counter charges preferred against him by
his Congressional enemy, he even falls below
the average standard of New York city politi-
clans; but still Mr. Hastings did not relish
the idea of being treated like an offending
schoolboy by a Congressional committee,
and, to his credit be it said, he stood up for
the dignity of his craft He coolly and pro-
perly informed the Investigators appointed at
the solicitation of Mr.. Brooks, that if that
gentleman felt himself aggrieved he shouldsee
redress in the courts, where full inquiry into
all matters in dispute could be made, and
meanwhile he bluntly refused to make replies
tosundry questions propounded, on the ground
that he might thereby prejudice his in
terests in the event of libel suit
being instituted. Now, libel suits
are bad enough, but if a newspaper, in its com
ments upon a Congressman or a legislator,
inficts positive injustice, legal proceedings
furnish by far the best means of establishing
that fact Mr.. Brooks may be, and for aught
we know he is, innocent of the charges
brought by Mr.. Hastings, but the day has
gone by when the public will consider the
judgment of any legislative or Congressional
Committee, instituted at the instance of the
member assailed, as conclusive. AS courts
martial are organized to convict, so investi-
eating committees, of the character under
consideration, are organized to acquit. In a
court of justice Mr.. Hastings will not only
have good opportunity to prove the truth of
his charges, if they are true, but every con-
troverted point can be scrutinized by an
impartial tribunal, instead of a
body which naturally sympathizes with one
of its fellow-members. If we could suppose
that any considerable number of members of
the Pennsylvania Legislature were bribed,
and that one of the offenders was directly
charged with such an offense by a public
journal of the State, it would require no great
stretch of the imagination to determine in
advance the report of an investigating COM