Herald and tribune. [volume] (Jonesborough, Tenn.) 1869-current, 1872-03-07

Last fall General Butler was asked what
would be the principal business of this
session of Congress, and he promptly re-
piled. President making" That clever
politician was wrong III regard to the
House of Representatives, which has gone
on throughout the winter steadily attend
ing to the public interests, but right with
relation to the Senate. The highest de-
Lucrative body in the country has made
| of itself a caucus of political wire pullers,
and has devoted two months of the session
to scarcely anything but the purposes of a
partisan debating society. Messrs. Sum
ner, Schurz and some three or four others
started in with the intention of using their
seats I'D the Senate as means for the max
ing of capital against the Administration.
and week after week has been wasted in
a food of talk, illimitable, measureless
and wearisome. Mr.. Schurz has suddenly
woke up and found himself a great man.
He would be something more or less than
human could he resist the temptation
which the columns of fulsome adulation
teeming in the pages of certain newspapers
forces upon him and drives him to the
spreading of his oratorical wings almost
daily. His vanity grows by what it feeds
upon, and he perhaps imagines that the
people really accept him for the marvel
lous genius and teacher of political homes
ty that Washington correspondents make
him out to be. Americans are apt to look
for more in a mans character than is in
dicated by the surface froth of his elo-
quence, and just at present they are not
buying Mr. Schurz at his own valuation of
himself. The floor of the Senate swarms
with possible Presidential candidates, or
those who aspire to be the Warwicks of
others, and with each and all the first ne
cessity is to get Grant out of the way.
This is the whole intent of this raking up
of scandals-anything, in fact, that will
do for a text upon which to hang long dis
sertat'ons upon the corruption of an Ad-
ministration the popularity of which is the
most effectual bar in the way of these
gentlemen's ambitious schemes. The New
York Custom House investigation promis-
ed a fine field for this sort of work, but
when it resulted in the discovery of abuses
and frauds that had grown UP under a bad
system and the Government proceeded to
remedy them, the malcontents were silen-
Ccu until tuCJ UiOuSho up luC fuOSliOh vi
the sales of arms to France. 1t is already
sufficiently proven that whatever money
the French Government may have been
defrauded of, it did not fall into the hands
of our officials, but still the investigation
could have been ordered at once bad that
been the object OF the movers. But they
wanted a prolonged political squabble,
and that is what the debate really has been,
Notwithstanding all the eloquence that the
speakers have displayed.
Of course, the Presidential aspirants
and i~ntriguers in the Senate have a perfect
right to make their plans and fight their
battle for the campaign, but it is a wrong
and a disgrace that the Senate of the Uni
ted States should be turned into a cOnven-
ton of warning factions. and the business
of the country given the go-by. The
House of Representatives long ago set
apart Saturdays for the benefit Of MEM
bers bubbling over with speech, and it is
unfortunate that the Senate has not some
rule of the kind. Let the takers have
certain occasions for the airing of their
oratory, and then perhaps there will be
be some little time left for work.-Bahi-
more american.