New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-05-30
MORE SUPPRESSION.


experience teaches nothing The Grant man
ayers in Congress, who have so nearly
ruined their candidate half score of times
by their obstinate resistance to popular de-
mands for inquiry into alleged abuses, and
have as often been reused at the last moment
to the danger of their absurd conduct, have
not yet learned wisdom from the history of
the Custom house Investigation, or the French
Arms Inquiry. In these cases they opposed an
examination with so much violence as to
persuade half the country that they bad
some enormous scandal to conceal, and it was
not until they had severely injured the Ad-
minstration by their foolish efforts to protect
it, that their eyes were opened, and the in
quiries were allowed to go on. Now they are
repeating the same folly. The report on the
French Arms business has been withheld from
the printer for the evident purpose of pre-
venting fair examination of it before the
adjournment. Everybody knew when the Com
mittee was first appointed what the tenor of
that report would be; but there was reason
to believe that Senator Schurz would pick its
fimsy fallacies to pieces, and show the people
not what the Committee wished them to be-
lieve, but what the testimony really proved.
So an opportunity for debate Oh the report
was carefully avoided
The inquiry into the disappearance Of War
Department records is treated in the same
way. The Committee has met in secret; but
we know something of what was disclosed at
its sessions. We know it has been shown that
an immense mass of valuable documents, to
which, by a rule of the Department, all access,
even by reputable historical writers and other
accredited persons, has been vigorously forbid
den, have disappeared. We know that these
documents have been traced to the
hands of an officer of Grants staff,
who was a member of the Presidents house.
hold and is now an Office-holder in the Civil
Service. We know that Gen. Badeau had
some of these papers at the White House, and
took six or seven cases of them to London.
We know that they have not been returned,
and that the Department has made efforts to
recover them, but in vain. We know that
Gen. Badeau says he has returned them, the
Department says it has MT received them, and
between the two, they seem to be abso-
lutely lost. We know, finally. that great
many and probably the most important
of these documents refer to portions of
Gen. Grants military career upon which
there is "A great difference of opinion
among military critics, and that the enc
mics of the President have drawn the
most damaging differences from their extra
ordinary disappearance. 1t seems to us that
under these circumstances common sense
should have taught the Administration that
only full inquiry and a frank and prompt
report could save Gen. Grant from injurious
suspicious His friends ought to have taken
the lead in ferreting out the truth, throwing
the blame upon the proper shoulders, and
furnishing the guilty if punishment should
be found possible. But the old policy
of suppression, which has failed and
wrought mischief so often before, is to be
pursued in this case also. Whatever the peO-
pie know about the investigation they have
learned from the Independent inquiries of an
enterprlsing press. Now it is understood in
Washington that the Committee, having done
ITS best to keep the evidence secret purposes
70 make no report, but to 30 home at the end