The Portland daily press., 1876-07-27
The Robson Prosecution.

The majority of the Naval Committee have
pursued the investigation into the affairs of the
Navy Department as if they were attorneys for
the prosecution, depending upon conviction
for their fees. 1t was characteristic of the
gross partisanship which has marked the whole
course of their proceeding toward the Secretary
Of the Navy, to seek prejudgment from the
country by sending out their adverse report be-
fore the minority could get hearing, and be-
fore the House would allow it to be presented
in that body. There is nothing in the report to
make it interesting as news-for the sensation
al charges and specifications have been hawk
ed about the country for several months past,
unless it may be in the vicious ingenuity with
which the majority of the committee have
wrenched the evidence to make it support
partisan verdict. They evidently feel the des-
perate necessity, as the time for adjournment
draws near, of doing something to justify the
scandalous waste of an opportunity to do some
useful service to the country, and have hit upon
this expedient to divert attention from their
own il-doing.
In regard to the character of Mr.. Robesons
administration of the Navy Department there
may well be two opinions. He has made little
effort to correct inherited infirmities, evils
which require heroic treatment, and will never
be cured so long as the department is used as a
means of rewardiDg certain kinds of political
service. Accepting the routine he found there,
he has administered the department in free
and easy manner, favoring undoubtedly his
political and personal friends where he could
do so without manifest detriment to the gov
ernment. In this respect he has had less re.
gard to appearances than prudent man, de-
liberately planning to plunder the country,
would have had, and has exposed himself to
sharp criticism in his own party, as we'll as
from those who from motives of revenge or of
policy would be glad to break him down. The
fact, too, that large claims rejected by his
predecessors, have been successfully revived
and passed with his approval, has exposed him
to charges of reckessness!whch he has found
it very difficult to answer.
But while there have been some things in the
management Of the Navy Department open to
criticism, which it is the mission OF the Repub-
ican party if it is true to its pledges to correct
and make impossible in the future there is
nothing in the evidence the committee have
printed to sustain aay charge of criminality, or
to afford any excuse for the sweeping and ex-
travagantly sensational condemnation which
the majority of the committee have passed
upon the entire naval service. They are on a
false scent, and by dealing in charges which
cannot be maintained, and imputi3g crimes
which have no existence, they, are making it SO
much the more difficult to achieve Immediate
practical reforms. Beyond an Objectionable
conformity to usages that ought to be abandon
ed and good-natured compliance with the ur-
gency of crowd who think that personal or
party services have given them some claim to
share in the chances of profit from the past
business transactions Of the government, this
partisan committee have discovered nothing
The real work of discovery and exposure had
begun before it came into existence; and this
investigation has made no substantial addition
to it. The real reform that is 10 be made in the
navy, as well as in every department of the
to abuses, will be made not through the malg-
nant mousing of hostile majority accidentally
in control of the House of Representatives, but
through the good sense and enlightened moral
purpose of the party in power.