New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1876-05-01
PIRTIN1N PRAGIICIN.

The systematic abuse of power, both III max
ing laws and III enforcing them, has Tor years
been the gravest fault of that Republican fac
tion which the Administration represents. III
seemed to the majority of the people time to
stop this use of the powers of Government IN
order to keep party in power, and therefore
the elections of 1874 resulted in n Democratic
House. II was a grave and terrible thing that
the power Of the Government was so used for
partisan ends; how grave and terrible we shall
not fully appreciate until we look back at re-
cent events from distance. This crime, for
wears condemned by us, we are by no means
disposed to treat lightly, for it is UNNECESSARILY
more dangerous to the country than the per
sonal corruption of Cabinet Minister, or the
petty thefts by subordinate officials.
The new charge against President Grant Is
that in single instance he has done exactly
what his faction has been doing for years. and
what he was empowered to do by laws framed
in the interest of that faction. He used public
money to secure the success of his party, 1t Is
alleged. That Is exactly what hundreds OF
appropriations have been made for, year after
wear; exactly what thousands OF officials have
been selected for exactly what enforcement
acts and force bills meant. Disregard OF pub
| lie interests has been common. What does IL
| matter whether the money was paid to JoDDers,
i'm consideration of large subscriptions TO party
| funds, or to secret or other agents AT the
| South or in New York, or as regular salary to
unnecessary officials, employed only because
| they were useful to party2 Morally, there Is
no difference Public money is taken, in either
case. for uses not public but partisan The act
| is not the less wrongful when it is done by law,
! or under color of law. The member of Con
gress who votes for an appropriation which he
knows the public good does not require, be-
cause he hopes that it will make votes for his
party, has been guilty of the very same crime,
in n moral sense. with which the President is
charged If all that can by any possibility be
alleged against him, in connection with the
Davenport matter, be fully admitted, it
amounts to this: that he has done, III one
other instance, what his faction has done for
years-he has used power for partisan ends.
| This is not by any means the gravest instance.
Consider the history of an election at the
! South Consider the dispersion OF leglsla-
ture by armed men After all these things,
| after enforcement acts and force bills, are we
70 90 into Mysteries because the President
caused money to be paid to Davenport for the
prevention of fraud in that locality where
Democratic election frauds have been greatest
| and most numerOusf
The Democratic party is in danger OF be-
lifting all that it may justly say against the
policy of the Republican party by affecting SO
much horror over particular and comparatively
unimportant incidents. When it arraigned the
general policy of the dominant party toward
the South as demoraizing, dangerous, and
subversive of free institutions, the people lis
tened. Thousands of Republicans refused to
vote; thousands more voted for change.
Men began to realize that freedom is a mere
farce if all the power of the people, once in
trusted to a set of servants, is used unscrupu-
lousy TO defeat any change OF power. But
when the Democrats tell us, with many a
shrink and shudder, that Mr. Davenport
spent twenty thousand dollars in year, pro-
fessedly in preventing and Furnishing election
frauds, and really in breaking up the
machinery by which Democratic MAORI
ties have been manufactured to order
in this city, we fear that many sober people
will laugh. Everybody knows that these and
other infinitely more blameworthy things have
been done, sometimes by legislation, some
times by forced construction of law, some
times in gross disregard of law, to keep the
party in power. If the President really be-
leyed that Davenport's operations were within
tho meaning Of tho statute providing means