The daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1873-1877, 1875-10-23
Ghe 99aii11g Argas,
From tie ~. T. Tribune.
Secretary Chandler.

The, announcement that the president
has offered Mr.. Delano' place to the Hon.
Zaehariah Chandler would be incredible
were it not matched by SO many similar
incidents In Gen. Grants astonishing
career. With the single exception of the
nomination OF Shepherd as district com
missioner after congress had abolished the
entire district government in order to get
rid OF him, this would probably be the
very worst appointment Gen. Grant ever
made. Yet there is something so gro
tesque about itthat in the first shock of sur
prise the people will forget to be properly
indignant. What! Old Zach Chan
dlerP is the general exclamation this
morning; that's just like Grant," and
SO, instead of getting angry, we find our.
selves wondering how the Michigan
Boanerges will conduct himself in the de-
partment and the council room. and
whether the president will find him an
agreeable companion, and what he will do
with the swindling Indian agents and TIM
Der rings, and what the people of Michi.
gan, who faneied they had got rid of him,
will say when they see him in the cabinet.
Nevertheless the choice is gross outrage,
The personal unftness of Mr.. Chandler for
any high place in the public service is SO
notorious that it would be folly to ignore
it. Ills unftness for the department of
the interior, honeycombed as it is with
frauds and scandals, is simply monstrous.
Mr.. Chandler was one of the last of a
line of politicians developed during the
war, when very loud and rhetorical loyalty
was supposed to cover multitude of i'm
reflections, and to fit a man for any place
of honor and emolument on this planet.
The same era of headlong excitement.
when public affairs were managed by the
emotions rather than the intellect, made
Butler military commander and Chand-
Ter leader of the Senate. The states
manship of the one was very much ike
the generalship of the other, and both are
remen bered principally for very large and
very harmless explosions. All parties
have gradually come to understand of late
years how empty and disreputabe these
| resembling patriots are, and if we have not
yet got back to the higher types of states
mansbip once represented in Washington
when Sumner and Schurz adorned the
Senate, we have at least grown somewhat
ashamed of the rampant vulgarity of the
modern Elijah Pograms, and Col Divers,
and General Fladdocks Mr.. Chandler
| in Cabinet, which contains Fish and Bris-
tow, and Pierrepont, and Jewell is a
frightful anachronism.
The action of the President in this case
(if the statement of the Associated Press,
that the place has really been offered tc
Mr.. Chandler, is true) is so strangely al
variance with the policy he has recently
seemed disposed to adopt that it will be
generally ascribed to the result of the
Iowa and Ohio elections. With the frs,
CLEAN Of Republican success he returns te
the old vices which led the party so close
to the brink of destruction. IF this is thu
explanation of his extraordinary action, il
proves what the closest and most dispas
sionate observers of Gen. Grants charac
ter and habits have long known, that the
Republican party must break with hin
much more decidedly and openly if i
would ever regain the power that is fas
slipping from its grasp.