New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1874-02-03

much all that Congress has done of late, and
including several leading persons who have
climbed or been boosted, foul and bedraggled
from the street, upon the load-it does not
seem to have occurred TO any one that tho
best thing to get rid of, the heaviest thing to
carry, and the thing that would most tighten
the load by being thrown overheard, Is
the system of pickings and steahngs which
makes politics dishonorable and politicians dis
honest. bankrupts treasures by mean and
drizzling driblets, establishes systematic petty
larceny away down in low official grades In
the matter of toothpicks, penknives, and visit
ing cards; that grows UP and broadens into
regime of plumber in the higher departments
that pensions private servants upon the Treas
ury. and appropriates horses and carriages and
harnesses, and no one knows what be-
side. to be paid for from the public
funds; that infests every department
of the public service from the lowest messenger
to the chief that off rs the community official
examples of small, overreaching, and picayune
cheating, destroying all standards OF upright
ness, and breeding everywhere a moral rot.
This is the biggest load for the party and the
country. To throw this off will help both
more than anything that can be done in the
Louisiana difficulty. or IN financial matters or
in our foreign policy. or in ciyl-sorylce re-
| form, or in any other direction.
But as THE TRIBUNE has had occasion to
remark before. it is too small business for the
| leading statesmen of the period. They Crap
| pie with the larger problems of finance. Their
range is higher broader. Their lOftier vision
sweeps q continent: their thought, embracing
debt by the thousand millions and currency by
the hundred, scars over the pettiness OF
few hundred thousands in contingent funds.
makes Jest of pensoned household scrv-
| ants, and has no leisure to listen
| to the wheels of landaucts and the
clatter of horse hOofs whirlng through
| the length of the Treasury. And no one who
knows the quality of these statesmen and
with what great difficulty and intense disgust
they bring down their large requirements to
grapple with little things, will deny that these
things are beneath them. But we submit not
withstanding that an Over-weighted party con-
sidering what it may best unload, will do well
to look over the system of pickings and steal
ings in all its ramiications and take some
steps for throwing it overheard.
And for these reasons. Whatever the lead
| ing statesmen may think about the insigni-
canoe of such things, the people who are so
besotted in ignorance as to believe that this
horse and carriage and household service busi-
ness is dishonest are thinking it is of cOnsd-
cradle consequence. After Credit Mobiller and
Senatorial bribery Investigations, Carpenter
vindications, and Salary Grabs, they will not
accept tho average COngressman's general de-
NAL of charges, nor consent that these
things be dismissed by some hippant Carpen-
ter or Butler as beneath notice. Unless the
Administration party takes some step in the
direction of the small economies, unless it
stops in some apprecabe measure the small
leaks that make contingent funds prey to
petty REGULATORS and draw down the Treasury
] constantly they will go out of power and the
Treasury will fall into the hands of a new
set of lcoches. To save themselves they must
do it. They must remember, too, that by
continuing the system they are establish
ing precedents that will be taken adj
vantage of when their opponents come int"
power as they somo time mist, ana That upon
these very pickings and stealings their enc
mics will be able to strengthen themselves
and offer such inducements to recruits as to
make it more difficult perhaps impossible, to
rout them afterwards and recover the lost
power. 1t is time to unload the system of
picking and stealing, in order to re-
establish public confidence In the Repub-
lican party. 1t is time to unload it, so
that when the opposition comes into tho sue
cession it will have no presidents for petty
plundering and no such resources for fortify-
ing itself in its position. Nothing is more
dangerous to carry under existing circum-
stances nothing can be unloaded to such I'M
mediate and prospective advantage. Is mt
there some small statesman in Congress whose
intellect is not too gigantic to take hold of
| this gubicct7