New-York tribune., 1872-06-17
NOT so MITCH LAUGHING.

Our contemporary, The Springfield Republican,
when the Cincinnati nominations were first
announced, advised those who disliked them
not to treat the matter as a jest-a suggestion
which not few of item showed little dispO-
sition to heed. Was there ever anything more
absurd could anything be more ridiculous
how could such action be considered seriously1
when was there before such a gigantic joke
Mr.. Thomas Mast grew almost comic in his
illustrations Mr. George William Curtis,
whose eye for the humorous is uncommonly
sharp, saw his opportunity at once, and
lampooned one of the candidates-for whom,
a few weeks before, he had been protesting
personal friendship,-just as a tailor might
have done it, while The Ner- York Times
giggled and TOared, and snickered and
sneered, and, taking the public into its conf
dence, joyously recounted the vast sums of
money which it had made was making, and
confidently expected to make. So the fun,
fast and furious, went on, and the joke was
enjoyed, until it was discovered that it was no
Joke at all, and that the Cincinnati candi-
dates at any rate, were not to be defeated by
laughing at them. Since that time we have
noticed a tendency of the leading Renomina-
tionsts to the sharp and the savage; and
this has produced just at this moment
state of things which is by no means
the least comic feature Of the canvass. The
country journals, which took their cue from
their city guides, are still in the funny stage,
and are making the most of the hat, coat, and
boots arguments against the nominee of the
Liberal Republicans; SO that, while the city
A. 80, 4; oniS toll ia
rural retainers Of the Administration are yet
trusting to the force of clumsy ridicule.
Upon the whole, we think that we liked the
laughter rather better than we do the bully
ing. There is something not at all pleasing in
the impudent arrogance with which the Presi-
Dental organs assume that opposition
to the reelection of the President i'm
plies kind of moral obliquity, and that
the citizen who supports Messrs. Greeley and
Brown must be either foolish or wicked.
With what GOODNESS these extraordinary patri-
OTIS take it for granged that the Liberal
Republicans are the enemies of their country
that whoever cannot see in Gen. Grant the
possessor of every virtue, Is stone blind; that
to think for ones self and to vote as one
thinks, is to exhibit frightful looseness of
political principle These gentlemen, then,
have yet to learn several things, and among
them that a mans vote is his own, and does
not belong to any President or Convention or
Committee-that President is not to be re-
elected, if he wishes to be, merely as a matter
of course - that any citizen having the
necessary constitutional qualifications may be
President if he can get votes enough, and
that any candidate who is supported by
thousands of voters is a respectable candidate
The aristocratic and arrogant, the dictatorial
and semi-military swagger with which these
retaners of the Executive call upon the people
to march in a line TO the polls, and to be sure
that they vote for nobody except the great,
the good, the glorious Grant. who is a soldier,
and by no means to vote for Mr. Greeley, who
has never been much more than the editor of
a newspaper, remind us of nothing more
forcibly than of the complications of Roman
soldiery, when any successful General who
had money enough to pay for the honor, was
presented TO the Roman Senate and the Roman
people as their august Emperor.
Ii is time, we think, for the people to con-
slider whether this style of making Presidents
is the best and the safest Ii the voters are
10 have no choice, but are To register their
votes as rings and cliques, as committees and
conventions may dictate are we not pretty
rapidly advancing toward a Dictatorship If
II President can claim a reelection as a matter