New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1874-09-04
VOICE FROM NEBRASKA.

Mixed and bewlderlng as it is in the vast
ness of its grammar and the comprehensive
ness of its scope, the sentiment OF Gen.
George H. Roberts of Nebraska with reference
to the mission of the Republican party as ex-
pressed in the Republican Convention of that
State on Wednesday last cannot but waken
responsive echoes in the breast of every
American citizen. 1t was Roberts who lindled
the Convention to the highest pitch of enthu-
siasm by his glowing oratory. 1t was Roberts
who bounded over the whole field of politics
with the lively and exhlarating skip of the
grasshopper, unrolling the future with the
youble tongue and remarkable emphasis OF a
lecturing accompanist to a first-class piano.
rama. And it was Roberts who uncurled in
the progress of his address the following re-
markable sentence, which rekinked itself into
a snarl Immediately on leaving his lips. Says
Roberts: "When every man in the South, be
"he red, black, or white, from the humblest
"dug-out on the land to the stateliest mansion
"on the seaside, shall be safe in his senti
"ments and his person, then. and not till
"then. has the Republican party performed its
"mission.n Nothing could be finer than this.
The wealth of its imagery, the strength of the
antithesis, and the picturesqueness of its pro-
phetic Innings, are seldom equaled and never
surpassed. No wonder that the Nebraska Re-
publicans rose up and cheered Roberts to the
echo. He had answered cOnundrum. In
chaste and beautiful language, in words almost
as charming as MesOpOtamia," and not
wholly destitute OF relations with each other,
he had impaired information to the Conven-
ton and the world.
A ribald community and a licentious press
had for many months been adjusting to the
party in power q rafting battery of conun-
drums, the spirit and purpose of which might
be summed up in the inquiry not entirely
free from Impotence and perhaps hunger,
"How long do you fellows propose to keep
"sitting at the tablet Isn't your mission
"almost ended7' The party in power had for
its mission at the outset of its existence the
prevention of the spread of Slavery into the
Territories. 1t had more than fulfilled it !;
had abolished the institution itself, enfran-
chised the slave, reconstructed the Slave
States, swept out the whole business into the
limbo of dead issues. The people. seeing that
all this had been accomplished; that the only
remaining thing possible to be done in that
direction was the passage of the Civil Rights
bill, and that the Republicans, with q two
thirds majority in Congress and all the power
in all departments, had refused or failed to
do that, and that the party was divided upon
all other political questions-had begun to
press the inquiry of the gentlemen who were
running the Government "on the exhaust
whether upon the whole the party had not
already fulfilled its mission and was not ready
to step down. To the average Republican the
conundrum was trying and severe. 1t was
hard to say why lot of men who did not
and could not agree upon any of the vital
issues of politics should be sent, under a party
name, to represent party organization in the
National Legislature. 1t was hard to say why
the mission of party was not ended when it
had accomplished all it set out to, and had
reached a pas when it was impossible for
its representatives and leaders to agree in
anything but the name. The party held on
to the offices with the instincts of politician
and the grip of death, looked their inter-
rogators calmly In the face, and gave up the
conundrum.
Up to this emergency rises Roberts-Gen.
Geo, u, Roberts Of Nebraska-and aings