The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-10-02
PUNIc FAITH OFF CONSERVATISM.

Delall state ornation is the loss of its
honor. 1t may be stricken by famine,
pestilence, and the sword be violently rent
and torn by civil feud and war suffer the
loss of armies and navies, with prestige,
territory, and power be subject to the
greatest indignity, humiliation, and wrong !;
sink into hopeless bankruptcy and finan-
cial ruin; but, with the preservation of
its plighted faith and honor, it is still a
state or nation of which its citizens may be
justly proud. In all the republics of an
tiquity, running back to the very verge of
barbaric times, we find nothing held more
sacred than the public honor-the plighted
faith OF people as given in leagues, al
liances, and general conditions dependent
upon the arbitrament of war.
The Roman fecia1es the very name i'm
plying good faith were the special custo-
dams of these leagues, alliances, and con-
ditions of arbitrament, as they We're the
proper heralds and proclaimers of war.
Asst was not lawful for the Romans to
take up arms against people with whom
they had formed an alliance, until the
feciales had demanded satisfaction and
exhausted all means and expedients to
effect satisfactory adjustment of difficult
ties, so when they had concluded peace, or
struck an honorable pact with people
against whom they had been at war, they
called upon the gods through these same
teciales) to witness the fidelity of their pre-
ceedings, and invoked their most implaca-
BILE judgments, if in any particular they
violated their plighted faith and honor.
Both in concluding peace and denouncing
war the public honor was regarded as tile
one thing sacred ADORE all others or, as
Shakespeare expresses it in Coriolanus,
Honor and policy, like answered friends,
do hold companionship in peace as war;
But how has the honor of the Virginia
Conservatives been preserved since the
surrender of Lee at Appomattox Would
any Roman feciales have justified their
course since that memorable and truly
historic event? OF General Lee, the high
toned christian gentleman and most con-
summate warrior, they would have ex-
pressed but one decisive judgment
he had most scrupulously and honorably
observed the pact, as we'll in its spirit as
letter, and that his name should 90 into
history as one redeemed by the grandeur of
his moral character and the glory of his
military achievements but of the leaders
OF the Conservative party, and especially
its subordinate generals surrendering at
Appomattox, they the Roman .feciales)
would have held but one opinion-that of
unmitigated contempt for their pusilani-
nifty in begging pardon for treason, and
then seeking to make the record of their
treason the chief stepping-stone to pre-.
ferment. OF Lee it might be said, as of
Coriolanus,
Though in this city he
iath WidoW'd and unchilded many a one
Which to this hour bewail the injury,
Yet snail he have noble memory
And why? Because, in defeat and sur
render, as in triumph and glory, his char
acter shone out with steadiness of beam
which paled not in adversely any more
than it famed up pretentiously in prosper
lty. Does any man in all America, or all
Europe even, imagine that were General
Lee living to-day, and running for any
high office in Virginia, he would allow his
secession record to be paraded as a merito-
rious claim in his behalf? Not much
and, least of all, would it be paraded by
him. He would say to the seryile
tribe of orators now pressing the secession
claims of General Kemper, as Coriolanus
did to the obsequious fattery of the Ro.
man citizens,
You common cry of ours whose breath hate
AS reek O. the rotten fens, whose love l prize
AS AS the dead carcasses of unburied men
Ihat do corrupt my air, Danish you"
And herein would lie the true grandeur
and nobility of character which marks the
genuine hero from the pretentious adven-
turer. The one lifts himself above all
adverse surroundings, the other cringes
like whipt spaniel in his pent kennel, and
wears the collar of degradation as if it were
a real badge of distinction.
The future historian will search in vain
for single precedent in history to parallel
the Punic faith Of the Virginia Conserya.
tives. They accepted the constitutional
amendments, implored pardon of their
treason, begged for readmisson on any
terms, with abject cringing did all
that Congress demanded, declared
yilIainy, the attempt
to smash the Union high crime and mis-
demeanor. slavery relic of barbarism,
and the Lord knows what else they were
not ready to do. But no sooner was all
this done than you find them glorying in
their perfidy, and openly proclaiming that
their acquiescence in the reconstruction
OF the government was sham,
feint, an imposture. a humbug; or, worse |
still, an act Of coercion not in their power
to resist! This is their attitude. and It
matters not on which horn of the uplv
dilemma they impale themselves-their
Carthagenian faith is the same, being the
asst thing in the world brave man would
BOAST of.
7 DIR. FRANKLIN once bothered a Penn