The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1875-04-22

LET US TAKE COURAGE

The events and disclosures of the last
three and half months of our first cen
tury--for we may date our independence
from April 10th, 1775-consdered by
themselves, would almost lead one to de-
spair of the republic. The scene opened
at New Orleans, on the 4th of January
1875, with returning board fraudnlently
md Illegally attempting to control the po-
ltical complexion of state legislature.
Then followed the interference of federal
troops in the endeavor to effect a partIcu-
lar political organization of the same body,
and ejecting. by force of arms, representa-
tives of the people from the seats rightful-
ly theirs by the free and unbought suffrages
of the same people rapidly followed by
the spectacle of an army officer deciding a
contest for civil office--that of sheriff-in
Mississippi and forcibly installing his IA
vored candidate, and the endeavor to over
throw constitutional government in Arkan-
sas. These acts all had their origin in po-
litical partisanship, in that bane of repub-
lies, against which Washington warned his
countrymen, party spirit. Perhaps, too,
money, that "root of all evil, had more or
less to do with it-for degenerate men seek
office not for the honor it confers or the
good it enables them to do, but rather for
the power it bestows and the pecuniary
benefit it enables them to reap. However
that may be, if the desire for money and
power originated the frauds, the strife for
party supremacy urged on the attempt to
consummate the outrages, and endeayored
to still investigation.
The second chapter presents the greed of
gain unmixed with any other consideration.
The ambition was to acquire wealth-dis-
honestly and fraudulently, because that was
the speediest way, and it seemed the surest
too. New York opened the ball with her
canal frauds by means of "steal bids, )" as
the contractors are said to call them, po-
litely termed unbalanced bids" BY this
system of frauds, millions of dollars had
been filched from the state treasury, yet
the cry was still "glve, gice." Massachu-
sets followed with her renovated state
house and her Boston postoffice, and New
York again returned the compliment by
reviving the memory of her "Tammany
ring" The general government contribut.
ed its mite to the dark chapter by the
fraudulent mail contracts, the almost whole.
sale corruption of department clerks, and
the ''stea" in the repairing of the mail
bags And now the department of the in
terror comes ia for its share in the general
decentralization, and throws in the frauds OF
the "Indian ring" seriously duplicating the
son of Secretary Delano in the preparation
thereof and it is charged-and the fact il
undoubtedly true-that the Indian servic,
has been managed with "monstrous ant
unexampled trickery, fraud and theft,
and 1t is said that no one, acquainted will
the circumstances, believes that the secre
tary himself is "innocent of either knowl
edge or completely in the outrageous prac
tces that have been going on, both in til,
Indian service and other branches of til,
department
This summary but again recounts
thrice told tale, one that has become almos
thread bare by the repeating. In recalling
its blackness of darkness, and almost ready
to proclaim our politics and business corup
and rotten to the very core, letus not forge
that there is relief to the picture, that all i
not thoroughly bad, and that we are no
utterly given over to our own destruction
Public virtue still lives. The very black
ness of the record only serves to bring GU
in clearer light the stern sense Of justice