The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1877-04-25

tnat Inere is scarcely any necessity 10 refer
to instances in support of the fact. All
persons of reading and observation will at
once bear testimony to the general
laxity of society in this regard,
and that, too, without special reference 70
the character or magnitude of the offense
against the law. To such an extent has this
malady spread that the law, in the estima-
ton of a large and steadily increasing
per cent of the people, receives
precious little respect, and its severest pen
alties are treated with undisguised con-
tempt. Upon this branch of the subject
there can be little If any controversy, for it
is matter of every day occurrence that
criminals, guilty OF the darkest
deeds, find some one to plead
for a mitigation of the punishment
which the law pronounces. II sentenced to
be hung efforts are ceaseless to shield the
culprit from the halter; if imprisonment be
the penalty, no means are left untried-frst,
to have the shortest possible term. This &C
complished, the next move is for pardon
and restoration to liberty and society. This
overwhelming sympathy for criminals is
bearing its bitter fruits Under the rule of
the radical party every department of the
government has been debauched; crimi-
nails have been in authority and crimes
have been treated as virtues. Thieves have
been feted, petted, honored and trusted. If
caught the government has sought TO screen
and protect them. II convicted they have
been, in numerous instances, pardoned and
set at liberty to prey again
upon society. This demorallzing work
has been going forward for years,
and the archives of the government bear ter
rible testimony of its progress in undermin-
ing the foundations of society. 1t was this
state of affairs that made it possible for the
radical party to plan, mature and execute
the frauds that placed Hayes in the presi-
Dental chair. Without the long prepar-
alton which preceded the infa-
nous plot of the conspirators,
success could not have been achieved I'M
der the old regime perjury could not have
played a conspicuous part in placing man
in the Office of president without shadow
of right to the Office. In the purer days of
the republic an attempt to commit
such a crime as made Hayes presi-
dent would have shaken the country
from center to circumference like
the tramp of thousand earthquakes. For
tunately the people were not so dead to all
sense of right as to permit the crime to
triumph without earnest protests, but, in
comparison to what ought to have taken
place, the work was as gentle zephyr to the
destructiveness of a cyclone. The triumph
of Hayes was the triumph of a crime which in
its magnitude towers above all other crimes
known to the country. In its influence it is
more baneful than all the national sins that
have been committed since the bell on INDIE
pendence hall rang out the birth of the ma
ton. If all the black and damning list of
infamous deeds that have been committed
in hundred years were consolidated into
one mass of guilt it would be contemplate
as compared with the offense that made r.
B. Hayes president. The pernicious infu
ence of the fraud that made Hayes presi
dent de facto; that reinaugurated an era
of official fraud; that poisoned justice
truth and law at the fountain, and
that created doubts everywhere as to mans
capacity for self government, is beyond
measurement or computation. 1t is said
that the mills of the gods grind slow, but they
never cease grinding. The country can not
escape the penalty of that colossal outrrges
1t matters not what Hayes may do. he has &C
cepted an office secured by fraud. The act
transformed him as if by fat of Jehovah
from an honored citizen to loathsome
official leper 1t reduced him to level
with the criminal classes-crime stained
and crime cursed. Such presi-
dent can not in the very nature
of things rule mighty people;
he can not obtain nor retain their respect.
The successful elements of success are want
ing-honor, integrity, high sense of justice,
purity of character and lofty scorn of Office
if tainted with fraud. In all of these Hayes
is wanting, and now his own party, the mis-
cradle scoundrels who counted him into
office, the very men who blackened
their souls with perjury to insure his success
are turning upon him and telling him that
he has played them false, and as will be seen
by Warmoth's speech to the Packard caucus,
he proposes to put the integrity of Hayes to
the test. The mills of the gods
are thus grinding out for Hayes
and, unfortunately for the country,
as well, not only penalties for crime, but
penalties for permitting them to be COM
mitted The country is still feverish, when,
If Tilden and Hendricks had been permitted
to have taken the offices to which the people
called them by an overwhelming majority,
all would have been peace. No single vexed
question is settled nor is like to be
settled by Hayes. The Boston Globe
remarks that eff the opposition to the policy
and administration OF President HAYES