The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-01-01

Done For Us.
Innumerable events that occurred in the
year 1873 will swell the contents of that
famous receptacle into which Time drops aims
for Oblivion; but in the most casual retro
spect we see many events that will not readily
pass out of popular remembrance, and some
|. that will make the year pre-eminent in the
chronicles. Distinguished among the number
of events that will not be easily forgotten is
the financial calamity of the year-that disas-
trous disturbance in the world of values which
swept the country like o whiriwind, and from
the effects of which there will be for many o
royal merchant no recovery while commerce
itself, in so far as it gets on its feet again, will
for many months move with crippled gait.
1t does not appear from the story Of our panic
that the world is growing greatly wiser as the
years run on, for it was just panic of the
same old sort that has racked the brains
of the bankers for some ages; and though
we knew we had in operation all the
elements of which panics are made we
wanted sagacity to escape disasters
whose coming we definitely foresaw. Will
1874 make US richer in this sort of knowledge
than 1878 found and left us? It is scarcely to
be hoped for. Time has done wonders in
helping the world to knowledge in finance,
and may help us in this particular point
eventually, but we fear not yet Other calami-
ties, less general, but even more poignant,
came upon us in the year that is gone None
in the calendar, perhaps, was more fatal
on the sea. Beginning with the loss of the
Atlantic in a January night and ending with
the dreadful loss of the Vile du Havre, the
catalogue of marine casualties for the year is
an awful record of the recklessness, indiffer-
ence and improvidence that become natural
to sailors, who constantly on the sea lose
altogether the sense of its dangers till the
catastrophe comes. Here, again, we may
indulge the reflection that Time is helping u.s.
for we cannot but believe that the day will
come when improvements in ships and in the
modes of sailing them will make these dreadful
disasters well nigh impossible.
Our glimpse over the year threatens to be-
come a catalogue of calamities, for by what
other name can we call the main political
facts In 1873 we saw painfully the progress
of reconstruction in the complete demoraliza-
ton of political life in the Southern States,
the decentralization spreading to the Northern
States also, as decay spreads from one apple
to another that lies in contact with it. and SO
on till the whole barrel is gone. Louisiana
trampled under the feet Of the political
gamblers, Credit Mobiler operations, laws
for the increase of official salaries, the gene
raj disappearance from public life of the
simple-minded honesty in which the country
grew up, the growing and common recog-
milton that ''the post of honor is o
private station" and that for q man
to hold Office is prima tacie an evidence that
his honesty is not what it should be; the pro-
authority by the appointment to Offices Of
persons unfit to fill them; the strange demon
stration of incapacity in our latest negotiation
with foreign Power all these facts-what
are they but items in a grand bill of indict-
ment which the years as they go by are per-
hitting the politicians of the dominant party
to frame against themselves? And the drift
and tendency and meaning Of these facts are
as plain now at the beginning of 1874 as we
can hope to find them in '76 or IT. We see
that the men in power are squandering
the inheritance of great party in treating
the Offices they were appointed to
administer as if they were owners,
not tenants-in assuming that the sove-
reignty they exercise is their personal
property. They have taught the nation to fear
party of whose inscriptions dishonesty its
leaders are the types, and have excited reac-
ton from those advanced political notions
that seem inconsistent with probity and fair
dealing towards principles from which the
abolition of slavery has extracted their one
bad point. 1t is one of the probabilities of
the prospect comparing the past and the
future, that the republican party may give us
the next President; but if it does that Presi-
dent will be elected not because be is the can
didate of the republican party, but because he
is an honest man, a man of pure life and patri-
otto purpose, with respect for the law and
sense of the obligation of an oath and with
the moderate talent that is necessary to
keep down the shallow-witted thieves who
writhe and fawn wherever good offices may
be had for impudent and persistent asking. 1t
will be q personal, not party, triumph-for
Grant is personal, not party, President;
and the people, seeing that the responsibility
of party to govern well cannot control the
natural instincts of the man it puts in Office
seeing they have got to take more notice Of
the personally than of party principles or
issues-will take care to have person whose
instincts and disposition are apt to be to their
taste. There are honest men in the republican
party; but if it does not nominate one of them
it will not elect the next President.
Abroad the year has not been golden one
for political progress. In England the great
liberal party seems to have suffered severely
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