Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1877-08-28
From the New York Tribune.
Civil Service Discuss on.

| Gail Hamilton concludes, in this morning 8
Tribune, the most brilliant and the most widely
read series of criticisms ever contributed by wo-
mans pen to the literature Of American politics.
In recent letters she has been treating questions
of legal and Congressional right; but to-day she
returns to more pungent details, and for the first
time stops to deal with her assailants. Mr.. Sam
uel Bowles, Mr.. Medill, Gen. Schurz, the New
York Evening Post the Advertiser and the Jour
nal of Boston, all receive her notice, and emerge
in turn each more or less dilapidaied, from the
attention. Mr.. Bowles fares particularly i'll. The
relentless critic, after vindc atng her first asser
tions, strikes to the marrow of his character in
single sentence:
1t seems now that the ordinary division of labor
in the Republican Office is that the gentleman
whom the Editor in-chief does not know is to be
slsndered by his subordinates, while his personal
friends are reserved to be slandered by himself.
No other political contributions have of late
years attracted anything like the editorial atten-
ton given these letters, and yet in its treatment
of them the American Press has not always shown
itself at its best. Many of the assaIants have
misconstrued the real point of the discussion
Gail Hamilton never once undertook to state the
on which her censure rested. What she did was
to take up the stories promulgated by Reform
newspapers themselves, at the very time when
they were chanting pgans to the new Administra-
ton, and to show how inconsistent was the news
they printed with the eulogy they based upon il.
She did not say she knew their news to be true !;
she did not say she thought their eulogy to be
undeserved, but she did show how poorly the
news and the eulogy fitted together In the same
paper. To hold her responsible for their news
was silly, while to evade responsibility for some
decent relation between their news and their Gu o.
gy was dishonest; but too many OF her not over
civil critics have done one or both.
Little else has been said to break the force of
her articles, unless in the story that Mr.. Blaine
wrote them for her, or inspired them, with which
she deals today after her own fashion; or in the
sneer that at any rate she is herself just mer-
cenary the professors Of unsefsh politics she
has transfxed since, of course, the Tribune hired
her to do the work. On the last point il is peril
nent to print the essential part of the private
letter to the Editor of this journal, in which she
gave the first hint of her desire to publish the se-
lies Of communications day concluded, and
made the only business arr angemeht that has ever
existed about them;
have written series Of papers on Civil Ser
vice reform, going straight and slam against the
grain, yours, and everybody elses who is in the
gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity like
you. both censure and praise the Administra-
ton as is meet, and in short, deal out exact and
equal justice to everybody, As they would bear
my own name you would not be snswerable foi
the opinions. And if, after they are pub fish ed
children cry for them and you should lpdnt to pay
me trife of $4,000 or so, you might, or if you
didn't You mghtn't. | should at least have the
satisfaction of having done missionary work on
good heather ground.
She has done the missionary work with cour
age and power that her asssisnts envy while the
SANDER, and it is slready bearing fruit. There il
perceptibly less gush than there was about tt,
Administration, and more serious sense of tn,
exacting responsibility of the time We are NJ
longer predicting impossibilities, or prssing sue
! cess and blunder with equal and undiscriminatin
J ardor. What Mr.. Lincoln used to call this bus
2 ness Of "proclsmsting" has been measurabl
4 stopped. And the more distinctly the occasions
i, errors Of bis subordinates recognized. tn
more distinctly appear also the sincerity. the di
interestedness and the patriotic purpose of Pre-,
VI ident for whom we believe great work in Amei
lean politics is yet reserved