The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-03-11

control twenty millions worth of city lots,
under our present law, we should all know
it. Under Mr.. Tweed's bill no one could
tell what wealth the Church possessed. We
trust that the reasonable Protestants among
the Democrats in the Legislature will oppose
this new ecclesiastical encroachment, as, of
course, the Republicans will do.
SENATOR SUMNER AND THE REPUB-
LOAN PARTY.
From the N. Y World.
The action of the Senatorial caucus of Re-
publicans on Thursday, in deciding, by
vote of 26 to 21, to remove Mr.. Sumner from
the honorable position he has SO long held as
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Rela-
tions, is the most significant fact in our recent
politics. Those who look upon it as the mere
elimination of personal quarrel between
the distinguished Massachusetts, Senator and
the President, underrate its importance.
True, there is a personal quarrel; true, the
President, by scandalous violation of all the
prophecies of his position, has intrusively in-
termeddled in the composition of the Senate
committees, and dictated the deposition and
disgrace of Mr.. Sumner; true, the President
has carried his point and achieved personal
triumph. But this personal triumph is the
death-knell of the Republican party.
The case of Senator Doolittle four years
ago is by no means parallel to this of Sena-
tor Sumner. Mr.. Doolittle DESTROYED him
self without weakening the Republican party.
The reason was that the quarrel in which he
engaged was q quarrel which brought him
into conflict with the fundamental ideas of
the party at o time when those ideas were
still in the ascendant. The Sumner quarrel,
on the contrary, relates to an issue which has
no connection with distinctive Republican
principles, and is entirely outside the old
party creed. The important fact is that the
Republican party has split and divided on
question having no connection with the issues
on which the party was founded and has
been kept in existence. That is to say, those
issues are no longer regarded as paramount
by the party which has heretofore made them
its shibboleth. They are eclipsed by an
extraneous question a question which
has no relation to Southern recOnstruc-
tion, negro suffrage, the new constitutional
amendments, or anything on which political
parties have, of late, been divided. If there
were any vitality in the old questions, the
Santo Domingo matter could not thus overtop
them and throw them into the background.
They are stamped as 'dead issues" by the
Republican party itself, when that party sub
ordinates them, in the face of the whole coun-
try, to the acquisition of one-half of an island
in the West Indies. Nothing can be clearer
than that the politics of the country have
passed into new era. If there were any
remaining life in the late issues, schism
could not have arisen in the Republican
party on a question having no connection
with its fundamental principles. Those prin-
ciples have no longer any binding force to
hold the party together; it divides and disin-
tegrates on a question for which the party
would not have cared a straw if General
Grant had not chosen to make it his pet
hobby.
The Republican party is no longer party
of ideas and principles, but the personal party
of President Grant, held together by ''the
cohesive force of public plunder." OF all the
men now in public life, Mr.. Sumner has done
most to build up and consolidate the Repub-
lican party. And now, at the dictation of
a man who never joined the party till he
hoped to be its candidate for President,
MIR. Sumner is insulted, humiliated, and
turned out of a position for which he
is better qualified by knowledge and ex-
perience than any other member of the
Senate. Evidently, the Republican party has
lost all its old vitality when new convert
and purchased adherent, like General Grant,
can depose and degrade an old dyed-in-the-
wool Republican, like Mr. Sumner, who was
q shining light in the party when ex-Captain
Grant was drunkard In the gutter without
sufficient character or intelligence to concern
himself about any kind of politics. When
matters come to such pass, it is too evident
that the administration is supported by
mere personal party, and that the Republican
organization is carcass from which the soul
has departed.
Mr. Sumner is not of temper to wilt
under such an insult. General Grant will
find that there are elbows to take as well as
to give" The release of Mr.. Sumner from
the laborious duties of his respon-
sible craftsmanship will give him leisure
to attend to the President; and the
President being stupid, vulgar, selfish man,
whom nobody really respects, and Mr..
Sumner being gifted with uncommon powers
of rhetoric and invective, General Grant is
in fair way to have his portrait takan by an
artist who will remorselsssly ''hold the mirror
mp to nature.' The eminent position and
eloquence of the Senator enable him TO COM
mand the attention of ths whole country, and
Grant has no capacity to reply to or parry
his attacks. Before Sumner gets through
roasting him, Grant will wish the Island of
Santo Domingo sunk in the Caribbean Sea.
The thanks of the Democratic party are due
TO General Grant for precipitating disrup-
ton of the Republican organization. There
n