The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-02-17
Tho Philadelphia Elcction-Honest
Government I'm Great Oittos.

Philadelphia will choose new Mayor to-
day, or re-elect to that Office the gentleman
who now holds it, and we find the Philadelphia
papers teeming with the chronicle of an ami
mated canvass, in which the speakers handle
equally the topics of the old parties, of reform,
OF public dishonesty, ring robbery, election
frauds and the Centennial which topics strike
us as becoming very much the staple OF
speeches in this era of good intentions. Such
contests are usually of strictly local interest
and the outside world might well fancy itself
Indifferent between the parties when on one
side the candidate is a citizen who was for
merly held to be proper man for Mayor by
the dominant party OF an intelligent and gen.
orally upright community, and on the other
side the candidate is vouched for as an abso-
lutte necessity of honest administration by
prominent public men Of great experience and
enlightened Judgment, of whom Mr.. Forney
may be taken as the type.
1t appears, however, that there is more in
the contest than the mere choice of persons
and though it is fought by the aggressive
party nominaly as the battle of reform, and
is such, there seems to us to be something in
it beyond the mere issue Of honesty and dis
honesty. Taken markedly as contest Of honest
men against rogues it would be difficult to un-
derstand how Mr.. Stokley, presumably in that
case the rogues' candidate, could be supported
by men like Mr. McMichael, of the North
american 1t would. perhaps, be less difficult
to understand. yet not altogether clear, how
he could have come by the republican nomi-
nation and the support OF great portion of
that party, which may be broadly taken to
comprise very large number of honest and
intelligent persons.
Gross corruption is charged against Mr..
Stokley and his adherents by the reformers,
who sustain Colonel Mcclure but it cannot
be merely the corruption of Stokley. It must
be also the corruption OF the republican party,
which has not found the gentleman bad
enough to throw him over, but dominates him
again. and, of course, takes the responsibility
of whatever fraud or misconduct may be fairly
brought to his door. On the one side, there
fore, we see an energetic tilt on behalf of hon.
esty in Office and fair elections, led by repub-
l
that they are willing to venture the possibility
of inhicting some damaging blows on their
own party. At the time when the liberal
republicans" placed themselves in the same
position on the Presidential canvass it was
generally thought that they were the less
panied at the likelihood Of damaging the repub-
hcan party because they no longer had any
hope to control it, and that they anticipated
more brilliant future in better party. We
would not care to say that the gentlemen now
agitating Philadelphia could not frame for
themselves far more admirable political ideal
than has yet been found in the republican
party, nor can we deny them any possible
aspiration toward political perfection in that
way. But whether they be simply ordinary
boilers or whether the reasons for their action
are amply decisive on grounds Of public
morality, their action is legitimate and we
rejoice to see them pursuing their campaign
vigorously. For those who sustain the repub-
and men persistently charged with con-
spiracy to talsify the results Of elections by
fraudulent returns-they seem to reason on
that old theory which prefers ''the fend we
know to the fend We don't know" They
deem every possibility inside the lines
of their own party better than any
possibility outside those lines. They
fear in this world, and perhaps in the
next, only the democrats. There is no un-
pardonable sln with them but that which
gives the victory to the enemy. Have we not
seen this on very much larger scale than the
Philadelphia canvass? Is it not notorious
this hour that dishonesty in the grandest pro-
portions, corruption deeper than plummet
ever sounded and injustice and oppression of
the boldest stamp, are sustained throughout
the nation simply and solely because they
happen for this occasion to be the crimes of
the republican party? When the United
States Senate is shown the full proportions of
the turpitude in Louisiana and the President
denounces it, Senator Morton deems he has
answered all corners by saying, s'The repub-
| lican party wishes no change in that State
1t is, them national weakness just now to
hold on to party corruption and all, and the
quiet old gentlemen of Philadelphia cannot be
| hayed alive for 1t.
For gross municipal corruption to have been
discovered in Philadelphia must be a surprise
to the people in the rural districts, who
thought that that city was the chosen and only
home of all the vices and for people to be
compelled to rise up in revolt against the or
ganized villanies OF government in a city
controlled by the republican party must surely
compel revision of all the fine theories which
traced our bad government to democratic su-
premacy Here is William PENIS quad
rangle, and they say the Mayor of it is 'but
little better than one of the wicked" In the