The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-08-07
THE cry OF CORRUPTION.

d. .
The neyer-lailing cry of the party not
in power against the party to which the
people have seen fit to cntrust the admins-'
tration of national affairs, is that of cor
ruption. 1t is avery convenient cry, easily
made, and costing nothing but waste of
political breath, which generally has to be
expended anyhow. 1t is cry that has
been raised against the best and most hon.
ore of our Chief Magistrates, from Wash
inston to Lincoln, just as it is raised against
General Grant to-day. And it is one OF
the degrading features of our politics
which taints many good mans heart be-
fore he is aware of it, and greatly embit-
tiers his future, if Providence kindly permits
him TO see his errors, and outlive his prelu-
dices. The time is most certain to come,
when the acts of the great and good men
of the country, upon whose administrative
heads have been heaped so much Bipartisan
bitterness and asperity, will be weighed in
the impartial scales of history, and when
careful summing up Of their public acts, and
the character of their whole lives, will show
them to have been among the purest and
most patriotic of our venerated statesmen.
When weighed in these impartial scales.
with the accurately applied tests which the
true historian always uses, there is no dan
ger of mstaking the real character for the
base caricature that partisan enmity may
produce. +.
The reason whyt this cry Of corruption is so
universally resorted to, especially in re-
publics, is to be looked for in the defects of
human nature itself. So long as dishonest
men everywhere exist, it will be next to
impossible to prevent dishonest men from
somewhere getting into public Office, and still
more impossible to prevent other dishonest
people from suspccting that they get in.
The more dishonest, in fact, man may be,
the more ready is he to suspect others.
This is a saying that has long since passed
into proyerb. The man who feels in his
heart that werehe in aposition +" to feather
his own nest y without detection, he could
not possibly resist the temptation to do So
is the most ready to believe that those who
have the " coveted opportunity will make
the most Of it. Hence the cry of corrup.
ton which always comes up from the party
displaced from power, against those whom
the people, always despising corruption
have more confidently entrusted with thu
reins of government.
But even if the charge of corruption
against the administration were proved in ;
few individual cases, embracing civil ser
vice of many thousand appointees, this
itself would only prove what no sensible
man would think of denying-that the ap
pointing power is not endowed with omnis
cience, but is liable to misjudge or be mis-
informed as to individual character in
few instances out of many thousands
Neither omniscicnce nor Instability of hu
man Judgment is to be claimed for any mai
in any public position. The President OF tn
United States, whoever he may at any tim
be, must depend mainly upon the represen
tations of those who have the best opportu
nifty to know the character of applicants 10
public Office, and while the information h
thus receives may be honestly given as in tn
case of the several appointees so confident,
recommended by Mr.. Greeley to Presiden
Grant, it is not always to be fully relic
upon, and the mistakes that occur are ratf
er chargeable to the infrmity Of huma
judgment generally, than to any particua
presence oft in the Executive himself.
1t is believed that no administration,
the last thirty years of our history, he
made fewer errors of this sort than that I
General Grant during the four years
which he has directed the civil service I
the country. -l.s 4st
He has at all times shown not only Ii
strongest desire but most resolute determ