The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-04-25

|
1t is miscellaneous mistake to suppose tnat
the triumph embodied in the veto of the Presi-
dent is the victory of one section over
another-of the North and East over the South
and the West. We have all along in this dis
cussion OF imitation deplored the tendency on
the part of many of the leaders of the infia-
ton movement to advance sectional wants and
the pride of States, not to speak of the ami
mating purpose of revenge, as among the
reasons in favor of the passage of the bill. We
have suffered SO much from sectionalism in the
past, from the efforts of the dominant men of
one section to command the country and bend
its combined resources to their own aggran-
terror upon any attempt to revive this spirit.
1t seems to us no less criminal to array New
York against Illinois on the currency issue
than it was to array South Carolina against
Massachusetts on the issue of slavery. The
success of the imitation bill would have been
the triumph of measure as sectional in its
character as the Nebraska bill and the Fugi-
tive Slave law; for it would have been the
passage of bill in response to the appeals of
demagogues that would have injured the
whole country under the pretence of aiding
the local interests of several States.
For it may be laid down as an axiom in
our peculiar American system that sectional
legislation will always disturb the country.
The interests Of the various States form
ing this Union are as closely allied as
the members of the body The American
Republic is like the complete living man.
What affects one State will be felt in another,
just as the body cannot be comfortable in the
limbs. We can understand how bill might
be passed protecting or in some way develop
ing the cotton or rice or sugar crop, stimu-
lating the growth of wines and the mining Of
gold in California. But this would not be q
sectional bill, for the prosperity of the cotton
and sugar and wine interests is as dear to the
North and as much part of Northern wealth
as the prosperity of wheat and corn and gen.
eral manufactures. When it is sought to
pass bill dishonoring the national credit
breaking the solemnly pledged faith of the
nation, committing us all to policy ofrepudia-
ton and inconvertible currency, and when the
argument is that this shame is necessary to
stimulate the ''drooping industries" of the
South or give relief to the suffering farm
ers" in the West, it assumes the worst phase
of sectionalism. The nation is dishonored.
We suffer in every branch Of bust
ness, in the money paid for labor and
commerce and investment in every kind of
property. Money has no longer any value.
All men with fixed incomes, and more espe-
cially the poor and laboring classes, find their
incomes decrease because the purchasing
power of money decreases OF what value
is the earning of hundred dollars week by
carpenter or blacksmith If he can only
More than all, the .'relief' which such bill
would give is altogether an illusion. There
can be no relief from imitation. We might as
well expect to cure man of delirium tremens
by giving him brandy. The remedy would
only produce new stimulus, from which
there would come q more serious reaction,
with mania, madness, exhaustion and death.
Nor do we agree with even as thoughtful
and experienced an observer as Colonel For
ney, whose journal occupies a singular
attitude on imitation, speaking as it
does for the great material interests OF
Pennsylvania, when he says that the Presi-
dent has taken issue with o large part Of the
American people and with large part of his
own party. We are sure that events will
show that the President is to-day stronger
with the people and more powerful in his
party than he was before the veto. Take New
York city for an illustration month ago
and if public meeting had been called to
sustain the administration there would not
have been hundred persons present outside
of the delegations from the Custom House and
Post Office. Let o meeting be called TO-
morrow for the same purpose and twenty
thousand men will fill Union square with their
noises and shouting Aud so it will be in
Pennsylvania. For if there is one thing which
every Pennsylvania knows Except perhaps,
Colonel Forney, Judge Kelley and General
Cameron) it is the difference between figs and
thistles. He knows that no act Of Congress
can make thistles figs; that law may be
enacted declaring that two and two are eleven,
but that it is only four after all. What Penn
sylvania wants for her iron and coal is not
the productions of Treasury press, but hard
coin or something that means coin. There is
no State in the Union whose interests arc
really more adverse to imitation than Pennsyl-
vania; no State more anxious to reach the
hard, golden bottom of solvency and specie
payments. We may say as much of illinois
and the West, and we are glad to feel from
our special dispatches this morning from the
West that there is the best feeling on the sub.
ject. The country is really with the Presi
dent. Business shows a frmcr and more
healthy tone, and oil around the universe we
see radiant, Frightening skies.
L. L.. 4 IL