New-York tribune., 1872-08-27
UTILIZING THE OFFICES.


Mr.. Boutwell,, the first financial minister Of
the Government, upon whom presses a weight
of responsibility which might we'll make him
economical of his time and careful of his Off
cial character, deserted the Treasury during
the late canvass in North Carolina to become
the apologist for Mr.. Grant, and to make small
speeches from the stump TO the smallest of
audiences. On his trail followed the Secretary
of the Interior, another servant of the Feudal
Executive, to be called knight or squire, baron
OF serf, as our consideration for dignity pub
lie or private may rate him. The two supple
Secretaries were dispatched upon their errand
not so much for the benefit of their speeches,
which appears to have been small, as for the
sake of their example to placemen of lower
degree-the postmasters and the collectors
the district-attorneys and the tax-gatherers
When the nobs of the public service are so
willing to be privately used, why should the
snobs be scrupulOus or squeamish And yet
| one might have thought that great Govern
ment minister, accustomed er O6iciO to large
transactions involving millions of money,
might little have shrunk from this two
penny embassage to the freedmen of North
| Carolina, whose sole wealth was in their
votes, and whose only hope was in casting
them honestly and intelligently. For if Mr..
Secretary's memory had been in pro-
| portion to his zeal, he might have remem-
bered, and perhaps blushed to remember, the
fine words in which he denounced President
Johnson, during the impeachment trial, for
doing upon a comparatively small scale
what Secretary Boutwel's master has done
upon a great one. AS a political canvasser
the Massachusetts gentleman forgot the indig-
nant indictment preferred by the Impeach-
ment Manager-how he averred that Presi-
dent Johnson "having entered upon career
"of crime, soon found it essential to the ac-
complishment of his purposes to secure the
support of the immense retinue OF pub
"lic officers of every grade and description
" in the country. This he could not do with
"out making them entirely dependent on his
"wlll; and in order that they might realize
" their dependence, and thus be made sub
" servient to his purposes, he determined to
assert an authority over them unauthorized
"by the Constitution. and therefore not at
tempted by any Chief Magistrate" "By
" his acquittalr said the Manager, you sur
"render the Government into the hands of
an usurpng and INSCRIPTIONS man, who will
"use all the vast power he now claims for
." the corruption of every branch of the public
service and the final overthrow of the public
" liberties" There is nothing like convent
ent memory. The travelling advocate of q
President impeached before the High Court
of the People might be excused for forgetting
the dirty linen which he had himself been
ordered to wash; but how could he forget the
horde of Federal pensioners" an immense
"retinue of every grade and description
from the postmaster of some petty village to
the Secretary of the Interior, all engaged, each
after his own fashion, in fawning upon the
hand that feeds them, and in exhorting their
fellow-citizens to render a like homage with
out like compensation If the Secretary lis
tened to any of the Liberal speeches in North
Carolina, they must have sounded to him like
the echo of that voice which, before the Sem
ate, harangued of the alleged crimes aud mis-
demeanOrs of Andrew Johnson.
1t is true that Mr.. Boutwell, may see in his
own good master the ideal of Presidents-for
MIR. Boutwell, has q most lively imagination.
Those who doubt this have only to remember
that Z" in the southern heavens, near the south
"ern crossn according to the Secretary
astronomer "there is vast space which the
uneducated call the Hole in the Sky, where
"the eye of man, with the aid of the
"Dowers Of the telescope, has been unable to
discover nebule, or asteroid, or comet, or
planet, or star, or sum- IL was into this
rather un. easant Hole that Mr.. Boutwell, in
voked "the elemental forces of nature - to
heave aud throw y tho unfortunate Andrew
Johnson' IL must be into some such "dreary,
"cold, dark region of spacen (for so
Mr. Boutwell, described it) that tho
Administration party is rapidly, though rather
unwillingly, retiring-a Hole in which there
are no post-ofiices, no custom-houses, no
facilities for carpet-bagging, no islands to
annex, and no fat places whatever for the
fathers-in-law and the brothers-in-law. Mr..
EYaGts observed Of the brilliant Manaeer's