The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1877-02-10
PARTISAN PLEADINGS.

PARTISAN PLEADINGS.
A HIGHLY imaginative newspaper
correspondent has suggested resem-
blance between the Electoral Tribune,
now sitting at Washington, and the
memorable impeachment trial of War
rem Hastings. We must confess, how
ever, that the strain upon the magma
tive faculty must be severe one to
detect any such resemblance. When
the decision of the Electoral Commits
sion shall have become history, and
time shall have mellowed the recollec-
ton Of the asperitics to which its deci-
sion gave birth, some brilliant historian
or essayist may prolong the recollec-
ton of it by some such dazzling de-
scrption of the scene now being wit
messed in the Supreme Court chambers,
as the gifted Macaulay has given of
the spectacle when Burke impaached
the guilty Hastings; but as viewed to-
dav, there seems but little dramatic or
picturesque in it. And vet, in one re-
spect, the scene is novel and anomalous.
Not that the mere assembling of so
many representative men of the nation
is itself an event especially strange
although probably no event in the his
tory of the nation has called together
so many of the Nestors of the Bar for
the discussion of the greatest constitu-
tional questions that have ever agitated
the countrv,-but novel and startling,
from the fact that prominent actors in
the scene of to-day are men who too
recently offended the patriotic sensibli-
ties of the American people to expect
absolute forgetfulness of their acts, or
to suppose that patriotism, as al active
principle, and not a mere sentiment or
idea, should not take some offense at
the undue prominence into which they
have been forced before the Tribunal
by those heretofore, as now, in svmpa-
Inv with the enemies of the Govern
ment Could any patriotic American
at the close of the war have believed
that ere dozen years had passed. Jere-
mah S. Black, constitutional interpreter
to James Buchanan, an open and I'M
disguised svmpathzer with the rebel
lion, and his no less worthy compeer
Mr.. Charles O'Conner, would, from
their places in the Supreme Court room
of the United States, under the very
shadow of the Goddess of Liberty,
which another moralist and patriot,
Mr.. David Dudley Field, SO inconsist-
emily apostrophizes, boldly and I'M
blushingly demand from this august
Tribunal. decision at its hands that
will seat in the highest place of the
nation another sympathizer with that
rebellion, in the interest of which one
President already had fallen, stricken
by the hand of Democratic assassin !?
Yet, under the forms of the same laws
that the rebellion violated, and under
the sanction of the same Constitution
that armed traitors defed, the same
unrepentant yet pardoned allies of trea-
son now demand control of the Gov
eminent. Dogmatc and insolent, they
lash the backs of mid-mannered Re
publicans who seem to lack sufficient
moral courage to protest against their
unblushing assumptions. And yet these
men have, for the past seventeen years,
stood up before the nation as the apollo
gists of some of the most monstrous
political crimes of the age. Was the
rebellion political crime, and were the
participants in it political criminals ?
Yet Jeremiah S. Black and his class of
strict "constructionists could find in
the Constitution of the United States
no power to protect the Government
formed under it, and yet, in their eff
fort to-day to secure control of the Gov
eminent whose very existence betrays
the fallacy of all their constitutional
teachings, they stand before the nation
defiant in attitude and unchanged in
opinion. But short time ago Charles
O'Conner shocked the feelings of every
true American, and outraged common
decency, by the unmitigated coarseness
and vulgarity of his published libel
upon the President True, since disease
has laid its whitening hand upon him,
and has whispered unwelcome warn
ings in his ear, he has regretted his for
getfulness of the amenities and digni-
ties Of the profession he is supposed to
adorn; yet before the august Tribunal
be is the same bigoted partisan as ever,
and condescends to language and argu-
ment that would be objectionable, ex-
cept in an old man not entirely account