The daily gazette., 1877-12-04
Our Washington Letter.

Thanksgiving in the Sendte-1he IRE
preSsible Confict-A Great Stake
Some Preiudlces of Statesmen Cdnt
rersus. Cont-Tne ancestry Of (not B.
Fly Butler and Dock Addms-The
Tiger Hunters of Africd-C Conklin0
and Gordon.
tFrom Our Regular Correspondent
WASHINGTON. Nov. 80, 1877.
The Senate was in session yesterday
and ate cold slices of Thanksgiving turk
ey at the Capitol restaurant, the only
grace being silent malediction of the
equivocal Conover and the treacherous
Patterson, with such feelings as the ire
pressable conflict, apparently never less
repressed than now, has for half CEN
tury aroused.
The control of the Senate is an i'm
portant stake, for it will mean, should
the Democrats gain 1t, a reorganization
of committees, the distribution of many
offices,the prictical control of the appoint
ing power Of the President, and, il is
whispered, the revival of the question
that the electoral commission was ap.
pointed to settle.
1t is not remarkable, then, that every
inch of the ground is subject of contro-
versy that is not always .dignifed, or
statesmanlike. Those of US who have
imagined craftsmanship to be lifted
above the plane of human prejudice and
passion, have had, in the last week, a
disenchartment.
There is ample in what grave Sena-
tors say to show that men elevated to
place in national councils, still carry
with them the bias, the prejudice, and
the ignorance of their localities, and the
influence Of the petty motives that prevail
in the more vulgar walks of life; but,
when their words are supplemented by
| their actions as we see them here, when
the speeches of Senator is emphasized
and interpreted by mannerism suggestive
of his class bias, his education, his habi-
tat, and his ancestry-we have lesson
in human, and political philosophy pro-
| found and more vivid than is written IN
histories. 1t is the privilege of those
| who sit in the serene nights of the gal
leries to study not only contemporaneou
history, but, also, human nature, from
its pronounced forms in rep esentative
individuals, and if we could but purge
our narrative Of cant and our vision of
| the notes and beams we see in the eyes
| of those whom we criticise, our opinions
would be valuable indeed. 1t was said
of the Bourbons that they never learned
anything and never forgot anything, this
was only half truth, but, in so far as it
was truth, of far wid@. application than
| the special class denounced, for the
thoughts of all men are ''widened with
the circle of the suns" and the Radical
Of the past has ever been the Bourbon of
the present, each accusing the other OF
cant, with a cant of his own.
| have been led into these reflections by
hearing Senator Gordon, of Georgia. in
his speech yesterday eulogise the ancestry
of M. q. Butler of South Carolina who is
waiting at the door of the Senate for adj
| mission to seat. He mentioned that
Blu Ter was decended on one side from the
l"swamp fox of the Revolution General
| Marion, and, on the other from the naval
hero (Com modore Perry "whose heroic
valor is immortalized on canvas in the
hall of the capitol" and he might have
added, that the picture was an extravagant
daub Iobbied through the Senate at S25,-
| genealogical, rhetoric from Senator Cor
don, was poetic description of one Doc
Adams colored witness against Butler
whom Senator Conkling described as "a
| born leader OF men, and a decendent of the
tiger hunters of the gold coast of Africa
| Senator Gordon is one of the most enligh-
tened and liberal of southern statesmen,
but, to speak of his rhetoric, after the m an.
ner of Darwin, here is a recurrence of an
ancient and a supposed extinct type. 1t
had been a long time since southern stat es-
men made them selves ridiculous with this
can't about ancestry. Every breeder of
| Berkshire pigs knows the Importance of
| ancestry, but what is there in the record of
the sWamp-foX or the hero of Lake Erie
| to prove that Gen. Butler was not implica-
ted in the Hamburg riots. And, so far as
the Senate or the world knows, there is
nothing in the record OF the tiger hunters of
| the gold coast of Africa that would prove
their decendent, Doc. Adams, of fair repu-
tation for truth and veracity, and yet this
| was the logic of "a lawyer of National Re
Iputatlon who has been given an opportuni-
ty to decline the chair of the Chelf Justice
OF the United States 1t is sufficiently
Ihum1liating to see two women argue in
| this way across the hedge on which they
dry their diapers, but when the representa-
tives of great comm nwealths stand up in
the council chamber of the nation, and
IemblaZon their antipathies in such petty
lhash, we are forced to infer that the work
Of the founders, ''to form a more perfect
union" has fallen into alien hands.