Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1878-02-16

only exasperate the opposition al
ready heated enough. The veto
once interposed and over-ridden, he
should have stopped there, and his
protest constitutionally expressed
would have had its influence on the
people, but he did not stop there;
he stepped down into wranglings in
the lobby; he took the stump and
madeangry speeches throughout the
Northwestern States, already in a
state of intense evaporation, both
of them methods at variance with
the whole spirit of the Constitution,
and inflicted incalculable evils on
the South, which we believe it was
his honest purpose to benefit.
The next important deadlock was
the Presidential election so violently
debated and settled with such hui
initiating effect to all parties con-
cerned. 1t gave the President an
Office with vicious title ON which
he himself was afterwards compelled
to throw condemnation by condemn
ing the State election which rested
on the same vote. 1t mortified the
seIf-love of the Republican party by
giving them a President bound by
the terms of his Inauguration to re-
spect the majority which voted
against him rather than the minor
ity which placed him in office and
made Republican President with
a Democratic policy; it cut the
Democratic party to the quick by
forcing on them submission to a dy-
nasty they had beaten at the ballot
box above all, it sullied the ermine
of the Supreme Court so indelibly
that the people have learned to look
upon it as a mere implement of
electoral chicanery.
Next we have to record the dead
lock between the Senate and House
on the army appropriations towards
the close of the late Congress. This
issued satisfactorily to neither party.
The appropriations were refused and
the army kept in pay by an uncon-
stitutiOnal arrangement, and finally
the appropriations were granted by
the present Congress without secur-
ing the conditions demanded in the
last; which conditions, however,
were no longer needed in conse-
quence of the altered circumstances
of the country.
Lastly comes deadlock the fourth
between the Senate and Executive
about the civil serviceappointments,
which is not yet terminated, and
which so far has on the one hand
been a wearisome obstacle to the
transaction of public business, and
on the other hand has become cred
liable to none of the parties engaged
in it; has degenerated, in fact, into
a scramble for the spoils between
the followers of Messrs. Evarts and
Conkling.
Every one of these collisions has
terminated in compromises more or
less disastrous and disgraceful to the
parties concerned; no one of them
has been productive of advantage to
! the nation, and meantime the Con-
stitution has been put to test well
calculated to detect any weakness
or vices in its structure. The strain,
jostle and friction to which our po-
litical system has been subjected
during these impotent struggles, in
which each department of state in
succession has vainly tried to lord
it over all the rest, is a process which
becomes more dangerous every time
it is tried nor do we believe that
the Constitution itself can sustain
much more of such violent conflict
without destruction of its existence.
| Some method must be found of
! making 1T work more IN harmony
with itself, or it will be torn in
pieces by its own friction. The first
desideratum for doing this is evil
IDENTIFY the placing the executive and
legislative departments better en-
rapport with one another than they
can be considered at present, and
the method for doing this will be
the subject of our editorial of next
week. We are as alive to the i'm
portance of doing this as the writer
in the Herald alluded to in the com
mencement of this article, but we
don't want to see the President in
the lobby.