The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-04-08
Shall the National Honor or the Re-

publican Party Go Downs
Belshazzar's grave is made!" In a
great emergency the republican party has
been found lamentably wanting, and this
never happened in our country to any
party but power consequently passed into
other hands; for the people will not
be paltered with on the great facts of
freedom, and it is freedom finally that
is in this financial issue. He has very poor
eyes for political facts who does not see in the
present attitude of the republican party, rot
ten with its relations to jobbery and money
corruption, the repetition of the attitude of
the democratic party fifteen years ago. when it
was rotten with its relations to the slavehold-
ing interest With the people it matters little in
the result whether the name be republican or
democrat or whether the power into whose
hands they are betrayed be slave
oligarchy or jobbery oligarchy-th the
fact is the same, and this they will
feel, and this they never forgive. For gen.
Grafton men saw the coming of the conflict
between free and slave labor but when the
hour came and they saw the issue face to
face with them it was found that the party
which nominally vas the peoples party,
which had the peoples confidence and sup
port, was sold out 10 the peoples enemies !;
was SO tied up and complicated with all
sorts of corrupt compromises that it could
not or would not move hand or foot in the
peoples cause, and the people arose and
swept it away. Similarly the people have
been face to face with another danger and
again they have relied upon popular party,
pledged to the popular interest and kept in
power solely because it was believed to have
this interest at heart and still with the old
result.
Since the end Of the war it has been clear
there was money danger before us and
money conflict. Gold and silver, or some
representative of these for which gold and
silver can be readily obtained, constitutes the
money of the people. 1t is the only
money with which they are safe
the only money in which they can
ever understand with any certainty how
much they earn or how much they own. 1t
is the only money that guarantees the full
protection of the law to their rights and their
property, for with paper money quarter
half or the whole of a mans farm or his prod
uce or his labor is confscated by processes
terribly real in their results, but so impalpable
in their operations that the law, the guaran-
tees Of constitutions and bills of rights
afford no protection against them. But the
war compelled us to give up that money, and
the people gave it up with the distinct under
standing that they did so to save the country
No fact of less moment than the national
danger could be weighed in the balance
against it. With the war safely over, how
ever, the people hoped to be able to clear
away its most dangerous consequence
our irredeemable paper-which is the
chosen money Of tbs classes that prey
upon the people, and in the presence
of which the people are never safe in their
property or their rights. For the support
Of their cause in this conflict the people
relied upon the republican party, as the peo-
pie before relied upon the democratic party;
but again the party that had popular conf
course to be controlled, not by duty or by the
pledges upon which it received power, but by
its corrupt affiliations with jobbery and with
all sorts of robbers, single and combined who
flourish in conditions tina. lead to national
degradation. Never was political point
clearer. On measure vital to the ma
terial safety of the people as against
spectators and jobbers, involving popular
prosperity and honesty, and touching most
nearly the honor and solvency of the nation,
the republican party has betrayed the people
and declared itself the champion of their enc
miles, Its moral dominion is, therefore, inev-
itably gone. Its grave is made, and to tumble
it in and cover it over will be the short proc
ess of one national canvass
Twenty-Five republican Senators voted for
the Initiation bill, and five assented to its
principles though absent These twenty
seven republicans had the alliance of eight
democrats, all from Southern States. Indeed,
it is significant circumstance for the refec-
tive that this measure, which tends deliber-
ately to dishonor the victor in the recent war,
OWco tAc blChoCi PuIU VI LID iOICC w NOOco lIOL
States lying within the limits of the late
Southern Confederacy. Out of thirty-six votes
for our dishonor the Confederacy has the grim
satisfaction of casting nineteen, or one more
than half. In this calculation we count the
Senators who paired in favor of infa-
ton as well as the votes actually re-
corded. 1t is not just now obvious to any
financial vision how the nation is to retrace
the step taken on this BILL and if it cannot be
retraced within the limits Of a national bank
ruptcy that shall wipe out all our scores what
does it mean? 1t means simply and unmistak-
ably the reputation of the national debt-the
refusal to discharge the obligations incurred in
carrying on the war. Such course would
place the national debt side by side with the
nopfodarafo 1abf opd ~ br;pO about 90, II,