The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-10-21
THE PRESS.
MORNING, OCT. s1, "a
Tired of Virtue.

"John," said one of our distinguished and
ry grave public men to a friend on one
occasion-"John, didn't you ever feel as if
you would like to be very drunk?" Some
times the saints get very tired of doing right
and want to taste the sweets of wickedness.
They have shrewd suspicion that their
changed life will bring them into some danger,
but they conclude to run the risk and, like
DR.. Faust, take their chance of cheating the
Devil in the end. We never heard it sug.
gested that nations sometimes give way to
such morbid impulses and that men in masses
may occasionally go wilfully in the wrong d-
rection. But the late elections in the West
look as if the impulse exists, whether it lasts
long enough to be fully acted upon or not. 1t
seems as if considerable majority of the
people of several of the Western states had
said to themselves, $50 to! We are tired of
this continual stimulation of our moral ma
ture-of appeal to us in the name of lib
erty, justice, equal rights, temperance, and
reform. However far short we may have
fallen, practically, of attaining ideal virtue,
it has been for many years, at least specula-
lively, the object we have had in view. We
have been continually in school or at church.
We are tired of the parsons exhortations
and the pedagogue's ferule. Now let us
have spree and rare good one. Let us
hear and see and do something that is very
wicked indeed. Instead of temperance, let
us go in for drunkenness; instead of crying
out for equal rights, let us hurrah for white
/ mans government. No more talk of justice
and good faith. Reputation Excellent!
More greenbacks Just what we want!
sHelp the South throw off the Republican
yoke and restore virtual if not actual slavery
in that part of the country?' Why, it is moth
ing more than our duty" They acted as if
inspired with the spirit of that Athenian of
old who voted for the banishment of Aris-
tides because he was tired of hearing him
everywhere called "the just"
And so the day was carried in Indiana and
Ohio in deliberate furtherance OF principles
that are in deadly antagonism with those
which the Republican party has beer twenty
years trying to place on foundations of rock.
tits fortunate that this caprice did not
seize the people at presidential election. In
that case the nation might have been plunged
in irretrievable ruin. Now the worst that
can happen is the falling of the House of
Representatives into bad hands for the next
two years. This would be dangerous enough,
even with the check imposed by President
and Senate elected before this temporary
moral alteration developed ITSELF Much
can be done by Democratic House to en-
courage the restiveness and dsloyalty of the
Sonth, to undermine the now well-establish.
ed structure of the national credit, and es.
peciallv to deaden the impulse for progress
and reform which has for many years been
so characteristic of the American people. But
we Ought to consider ourselves fortunate if
nothing worse happens than an exhibition of
the Democratic prediction for the worst
principles without the power to carry them
fully into effect Nothing can be better cal
culated to reconcile all Grant Republicans
with their party, faulty as it is, than Demo-
cratic House of Representatives hurrying the
country toward reputation and making
common cause with the worst elements in
the South.