National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1875-01-28

we fear the story Of Chatham and Henry is a
tale that has been told, and scan in vain this
vast asscmblage, clothed upon and invested
with the divine right of upholding the letter of
free government, to find that phalanx we
hoped defensive of right and the oppressed.
Wheels within wheels, partisan and sub
partisan claims, and covert fear of independ-
ence binders body of as average intellect as
any government can show from acting out
the just conviction fretting.every' Congressional
breast, haunting every Congressional pillow.
Claiming to give governmental ideas Of terse-
ness, feasibility and strength, we yet weaken
the keystone of the Federal arch by giving
here less than the most backward nation in the
ranks of enlightenment. No earthly power can
stay this legislation, while we shrink from
tracing parallel between the vacillation and
culpable sloth of the hour and the short
sighted dalliance of slaVe-holding constitu-
tional trainers. A little more sloth and slum-
Der, timorous treating of corroding ulcer,
than caustic self-affective measures had we'll
nigh cost the nations life In its first century
Beware! truant hearts and blind, that through
willful obtuseness ye forge not an error hand
maid to as disastrous results. Sooner or later
shall the mooted question of equal rights be
consistently established, else the monstrous
fraud Of q vaunted free country be proved
''the ARREST bubble of an empty head"
THE New York Tribune, under Mr.. White
law Reid, is to-day the principal organ of
Democratic statesmen and Wall-street stock
gamblers, who find their greatest profit in the
instability of Governmental policy and the
fluctuations of stocks and bonds. On the 23d
of March, 1871, when under the management
of the late Horace Greeley, 1t characterized
the Democratic party and its policy in the FOL
lowing truthful, ringing, earnest words: 'The
Democratic party of to-day is simply the re-
bellion seeking to achieve its essential pur-
poses within and through the Union. A victory
which does not enable it to put its feet ON the
necks of the black race seems to the bulk of
its adherents not worth having. Its heart is
just where it ives when 1t regarded slaveryiand
Constitution as two names for one thing. Il
hates the generals who led the Union armies
to victory, and rarely misses q chance to dis
parage them. 1t clings to that exaggerated
notion of State Rights which makes them the
shield of all manner of wrongs and abuses. It
takes counsel of its hates even more than of
its aspirations, and will be satisfied with no
triumph that does not result in the expulsion
of all active, earnest Republicans from the
South" Again, in the latter part OF 1871 Mr..
Greeley drew in the New York Tribune this
faithful pen portrait of that party Of which he
was in less than a year afterwards to become
the candidate: SIT is rebel at the core to-day,
hardly able to reconcile the defeats of Lee,
Johnston, Bragg, Hood and Price, and the con-
sequent downfall of its beloved Confederacy,
with its traditional faith in Divine Providence
1t would hail the election of Democratic
President in 1879 as virtual reversal Of the
Appomattox surrender. II would come into
power with the hate, the chagriu, the wrath,
the modification of ten bitter years to impel
and guide its steps. 1t would devote itself to
taking off or reducing tax after tax, until the
Treasury was deprived of the means of paying
interest on the national debt, and would hail
the tidings of national bankruptcy with unal-
Logged gladness and concealed exultation.
Whatever chastisement may be deserved by
our national sins, we must hope that this dis
grace and humiliation will be spared u.s."
These words are as truthful to-day as when
written by that great editor, before his reason
had been dethroned and his brain softened by
the dazzling visions Of the Presidency pre-
scented to him by Reid & Co. in the Cincinnati
movement, but 1t would astonish the readers
of the Tribune to see them III its editorial
columns now.