New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-10-14
Nv IT1DE0UATE VOC4BULARY.

Our vocabulary needs enlarging. The Ian
guage is utterly unequal to the demands made
upon it.. One political campaign, particularly
if il be warm one, exhausts it. Two or
three political conventions even, draw it down
TO such degree that thirsty souls with great
thoughts in them go wandering round for
weeks afterward with inadequate and feeble
expression, waiting for people to forget the
hyperbOle of the campaign and descend to
proper appreciation of the force of the average
Notwithstanding, in fact, for vocabulary
that has been exhausted to fill up once more
and mean something. The language of the
convention and caucus and campaign is
as inflated as the currency. 1t fiuc-
tuates in value, and is absolutely ire
deenable. 1t passes current over every
stump and in every political organ, as
ereenbacks do over counter and bar till some
time-after election say-some supplemented
person who has been using it freely in
newspaper-for instance, such a man as Mr..
George w. Curtis-leans over the Government
counter with handful of it to be redeemed,
when "the Great Silent Man, with muscle
unrelaxed, informs him that for the present"
for this occasion only" payment is sus-
"nended.p And then ten thousand fools, with
nifty checks and bellies full of the east wind,
who 90 about with quilts to utilize their
Aatuence in distending fabby resolutions and
lanky candidates, cry out: q" It's only tempo
"rary. we we only suspended on Civil Service
reform, and shall resume on that shortly"
And the resumption Is only more imitation.
The lie that last year did good service in
eloctine a thief to office has turned out a lie.
They do MT redeem it, but they issue in its
stead a larger one. Last years exaggeration
must be exaggerated. The demand for adj
iectives grows by what it feeds ON until the
vocabulary is wrung dry of sense or meaning,
and the profanity of the bar-room Is abso-
lutely necessary to put life into the inane
decencies of the platform and the stump.
The language of panegyric and praise has
been so exhausted in Inning the beautiful
characters, the transcendant abilities, the spot
less integrity, and the exemplary private lives
of candidates who pass their time in the slums
making public robbery their business, politi-
cal corruption their study, and the worst vices
tbeir recreation, that words have lost their
meaning. and the epithet christian states
az mani has become almost a reproach. On the
other hand Objurgation has lost its weight and
denunciation its significance. The rhetorical
mud of black guardism, recrimination and abuse
has come to be 80 common substitute for de-
monstration and argument, and so freely flung
ut the characters of the "purest and best"
that the sneak thief is robbed of his generic
distinction, and the highest boast of the decent
citizen is that he has never been a candidate
for office. The disorder grows and increases.
An elastic currency Is accompanied by an
"elastcn vocabulary, and it is an elasticity
that always expands, never contracts. In
deed both are elastic only in their
capacity for imitation. Contraction means
Temporary shriveling and unganliness, and
that the distempered public sense will not
tolerate. Nothing now but constant bulging
pleases the eye or satisfies the appetite. The
atmosphere of finance is the atmosphere of
nolitics. The infection of irredeemable cur
renew taints the whole of it, just "a men
who mean to be honest and deal justly pay
their debts in promises redeemable only in