Litchfield enquirer., 1878-05-02
Getting Ready.

eieCtlOu. Inc cnoiCc OI new OOHSTSSS VIII indicate the result in 1880. What are the prospects? Our own belief is that if the battle is fought on the oldissues Northern dislike and distrust of the South-it will prove demo- cratic success. Let us look, for instance, at the present state of politics and of political feeling. There is no doubt of the Senate. That will be surely democratic in the next Congress. Tie House will apparently be close; but where can straight Republicanism gain anything on the results of 1876? South Caro- lima, Florida and Louisiana are now Democrat ic California, which gave Hayes it's electoral vote, is now Democratic, also The new par ty,-the so-caIled National-may win enough seats in Congress to hold balance of power, but of straight Republican majority there can be little reasonable expectation. Where ever the party takes strong ground for Hayes and Reform, it may make some gains, but we do not see where those who propose to ignore the Administration can hope for Republican victory. next fall.
 While such seems the probable issue of a battle between straight Republicanism and straight Democracy. there is a large and a growing party of nonpartisans who will take little interest in such contest. They have no faith in straight politics They see plainly that the political leaders who beat their res pective party gongs so furiously through the months of September and October of each al- ternate year, are in pursuit of preferment, not of principle. Why has Republican Washing ton risen almost as one man against an honest and a well-meaning Administration? Why is the "quickened conscience" of the Csrpet-Bag- ger just now moved to acknowledge that it has been led astray by the arts of a wicked Presi- dent? Simply because men who have beaten oratorical gongs and blown editorial trumpets, and spent untold sums of money, and told in- numerable lies, and have counted votes that were never cast, and refused to count votes that were cast, to the imminent peril of soul and body, have not been properly sustained in their misdeeds, and have not been rewarded with offices by an ungrateful President who they now say was elected by their fraud.
 The Democratic politician takes as little ''stock" in Hayes as the Republican. He ex- poets to profit by him; but the last thing he proposes is to initiate him. He means to beat his own peculial gongs, and blow his own pe- culiar trumpets, and practice his own peculiar frauds; and then, in case of success, he will demand pay in proportion to the work he has done The Democrats who pound no gongs and who spend no money, and who tell no lies about themselves and their opponents du- ring the months of September and October next, are not the Democrats whom he propo- ses to reward with office. Preferment must go to those who work for it, or the party will inevitably disband. There are no such dis tinct issues nowadays as will keep party together. In fact there is nothing left but the spells of office to fight for Ii the politician loses these, his occupation is gone. In one thing, therefore, the partisans both Demo- cratic and Republican-can agree they Zig nOre" Hayes.
 What the politicians propose to offer us next fall, then, is the play of Hamlet, with Ham, let left out. Their "quickened conscience" now confesses, in sackcloth and ashes, that the spectacle of two years since-Hamlet, with Hamlet left in-was an awful bunder, much too expensive mistake to be ever repeated again in American pOlitics. Thu Re1Orn, promised in the Republican platform, and in the record of Mir. Tilden, unluckily gave the people taste of that forbidden fruit. If Hayes had been politician, the people and not the politicians would have been disappoint- cd but he became debauched with the notion f1.af people have fallen in with his notion and now the politician looks forward to three more years of famine-three dreadful years in which the beaters of gongs, and the dispensers of rum and money at elections and those who lie and cheat for the party, are to have no sort of reward from an ungrateful administration For once, then, the politicians propose to be partially honest with the people-they are to offer us no Reform, this year. Neither side is to do it, and thus the way is to be paved for the elevation of & politician to the presidential chair in 1880, and the abandonment of the sys- tem proposed by impractical" MT. Hayes, and the Civil Service Reform fanatics who are his only supporters.
 What is there, then, so lovely about the old parties that men must giveup Reform for fear it may destroy them? What is Democracy as we now find it? The party of the people? Such it certainly was eighty years ago. Such it continued to be, to modified extent, for for ty years thereafter. Then it turned against popular rights and became the champion of slavery, and has been an extinct volcano, these thirty years. When the lava comes up from the depths of society now, it has to find new crater-"Labor Reform" or "National-no longer Democratic" Republicanism has, indeed, a glorious record as a peoples party. It was once as radical in fact as it is in name :; but sixteen years of power have changed all that. The radicals who organized it are dead; the objects for which it was organized are ac- complished and nothing remains but the an in,osities on which certain trading politicians still live. Its Glasses and Stewards and Sum- ners are succeeded by Blaines and Buffers and Conklings. The fanatics" who started the party are gone and the statesmen and sol diers who carried it safely through all difficult ties and dangers, who saved the Union and abolished slavery, are succeeded by politicians who nearly ruined the conquered South, and who have eventually brought defeat on their party.
 If straight Republication is to ignore Hayes and Reform, will it also attempt another crusade against the South Is next falls cam- paign to attempt the resurrection of the Carpet Bagger That individual has been painting his own portrait of late. Patterson and Conc yer, McLin and Dennis, have painted the black est picture of that type of politician that has yet gone upon canvass It is kind of ruler that civilized people, now that they see what it really is. can never restore. Ignoring both Hayes and Reform and the Carpet Bagger