New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1874-07-11

sentative OF State which rejected Win scOrn
the Legal Tender act, and has continued
throughout to pay the interest and principal
of her debt in gold We called Mr.. Dawes's
bill an initiation measure, because plain COM
mon sense could give it no other nterpreta-
ton, and because all the nilationists In Con
gress accepted it as such.
We now find that the friends of some
twenty-five or thirty Congressman from the
Eastern and Middle States who voted for Mr..
Dawes's bill find it necessary to apologize for
the too great readiness shown by those Con-
gressmen to mako concessions to imitation.
They have succeeded in demonstrating to per-
lection that Congress did not know what
would DO the effect of the bill. This we grant,
and we say that Mr.. Dawes and those who
voted with hun deserve the sevcrest censure
for making laws Of such tremendous scope
without knowing what they meant or would
be likely to accomplish. But we further as
sert that the effect of the bill, considered as
a whole and taken for the whole pc
rod of its probable operation, Is to
initiate the currency, to weaken the security OF
banking, and to make more difficult than ever
the restoration of "a fixed standard of value.
The innationIsts, the only true friends the
bill ever had, may be disappointed in les tenn
porary effects, but they are well aware that it
has prevented the undoing of Mr.. Richardson's
bad work, and has made it possible to carry
on the business of banking in the reckless
style of forty years ago. They know that they
have only to wait and the mischief will work,
to use a phrase of CObbetts like new beer
" in a vat"
1t may be highly essential to the future
welfare of the country that the men who are
now in power be kept at the helm. 1t may
be the right thing to bury the living issues OF
the hour and keep the people at work few
years more, hOpelessly turning the treadmill
which grinds for ollice-hoders only. Har-
mony is an admirable thing, not solely for
the angelic hosts, but for combinations OF
merely human beings bent on getting their
sustenanco without rendering any adequate
service therefor. We have expressed the
opinion that Mcssrs. Freeman Clarke, George
G.. Hoskns, Clinton ID. MacDougall, Ellis Ii.
Roberts, Lyman Tremain, William A. Wheeler,
and David WILDER, congressman from this
State, who voted for Mr.. Dawcs's olive branch
to the inlationists, might do better service to
the cause OF. an honest currency in private
life than they have done III congress-
These gentlemen may take great
deal of pride in having harmonized themselves
at critical moment with Morton, Logan, ana
others who think that the essential quality of
money should be the ease with which it can
be obtained rather than the difficulty. That
harmony, coi!j5..HIltt. i is Tic accommodating
disposition shown by Mr.. Dawes and his
friends, must have been intensely gratifying
to Mr.. Morton, Mr.. Logan, and their friends.
But constituents at home who are not infla-
tionists, who are not in office, who have
no friends in Office and who are sufficiently
satisfied that nations can be and are governed
by men whose wisdom is more fully concealed
than the comets tail on a cloudy night, will,
as we hope, insist on less harmony and hum
bug, and more sincerity and sense on the part
of their representatives..