The New York herald., 1877-10-18
The General Drift of Poiitics-Dec-
adcnce az tho Republican Party.

hrst appearance before congress, auu IL
may be expected that the season of rest and
performance will give way to season OF ex-
PLANTATION and defence. The party's conven-
tions have spoken. In many States the people
have spoken through the ballot box. We
have had Presidential progress. We have
had declarations of opinion from leading
men of all parties-from Robert Toombs and
Wendell Phillips, from Blaine and Hamp-
ton, Conkling and Lamar. We can there
fore form an approximate idea of the politi-
cal condition of the country and of the pos
sibilities of coming political events.
Our first thought is that the republican
party is in state of dissolution. 1t is with
regret that we notice certain peculiar inva-
riable signs of disintegration in this party,
one of the greatest that has ever existed un-
der a Legislative government. Every coun-
try blessed with free government looks
with pride upon its parties. They are the
best expression of free thought, and next to
the pride with which freemen regard those
who have saved or served the nation they
regard those who formed or Illuminated great
political ideas. The English tory glories in
the fame of Pitt and Peel and Stanley, while
Somers and Fox and Grey. The French re-
publican rejoices in the virtue Of Ro-
land, the elegance of Verginaud, the
austere genius of Carnot, while the
French royalist pays homage no less
sincere to the memory of Neckar
and Chateaubriand and Berryer. In the
United States party government and party
fealty have taken wider range because, un-
like England, we have not been burdened
by privileged class and royal system,
and, unlike France, we have not had to con-
tend against those three enemies of freedom
and national development-an empire based
upon force, standing army and an estab-
lished Church. We have had parties repre-
senting ideas, parties representing mere
passion. They differ in their growth as the
rank fungus shooting up from the poisonous
swamp differs from the life-giving fruits Of
the field. We have had Jacobinism, anti
Masonry. Know Nothingism, notification,
anti-rentism, greenbackism and secession.
These have swept over the country like the
malarial fevers which we see at times in the
low alluvial regions Of the South Atlantic
coast. Springing from passion and in many
cases degenerating into crime, they died out
as soon as the people came to know their
enormity and shame.
The real parties Of our history have had
different career. The federal and republican,
the whig and the democratic, the demo-
cratic and the republican, are the three
political generations OF our first hun
dred years. The federal and republican
represent the rivalries Of Hamilton and JEFF
ferson; the democratic and whig those Of
Jackson and Clay. They were to great ex-
tent personal parties in this, that they
scarcely survived their founders. Federal
ism had only a faint life after the pistol Of
Burr laid its leader low under the shadows
OF the Palisades. Republicanism, as it was
known in the earlier days, ended with JEFF
ferson. The whig party, called into life by
the genius Of Henry Clay, fell into
decline when death put it's seal upon
his gracious, winning lips, while the
democracy Of Jackson only resembles in
name the democracy which arose out Of the
perfdy Of the Nebraska bill and swept the
country into civil war. But these parties
were great in their day, and their memories
are cherished as tenderly as Englishmen
cherish the memories of whig and tory. Our
political literature is eloquent with their
trials and triumphs. Old politicians-vet-
Grams of many an almost forgotten fight-like
Goldsmith's veteran, shoulder their crutches
and show how fields were won. They speak
OF famous campaigns, of Hickory and Little
Van, Of Tippecanoe and Tyler too, of Harry
of the West, of the Little Giant and the Rail
Splitter, with the same earnest, atfectionate,
garrulous pleasure that the village pen
sioner, leaning over the stove in the corner
grocery, tells how no charged at Buena
Vista, under Taylor, or drove Lee into
Appomattox, under Sheridan and Grant
The greatest party in our history is the re-
publican. It's career can only be compared
to that Of the wings Of the Revolution, who
began by resistance to an arrogant Ministry
and ended by founding one of the dominant
governments Of the earth. If the wings of
the Revolution founded the nation the re-
publicans saved it. To the republicans we
owe our existence not merely as free peo-
pie, but as a self-respecting and world
respected people If the democracy had con-
tinued in power as it existed in Buchanans
days we should now either be one of several
rival confederacies, as hopelessly divided as
the fantastic republics in South America and
governed by European consuls and ships-of-
war, or we should he under the slave oil
garchy, which, in fulfilment Of the prophecy
of Toombs, would be calling the roll OF its
slaves on Bunker Hill. That we have es-
capped these degrading alternatives we owe
to the republican party, and we can never
be too grateful for that achievement. Be-
cause of this gratitude we regret the symp-
toms OF disintegration now manifest. In the
South there is not even republican organ