New-York tribune., 1879-12-12
An UNGRATEFUL Party.

To cOntemplative mind, the amusement
now so greatly in vogue among Democratic
newspapers of jumping on the coffin of him
whom they describe as " the late Mr. Tilden,"
has features not unworthy consideration and
study. 1t combines the vigOr of "A waidance
with the grOtesque cOnviviality of a
wake. There are times when this proceeding
seems to be mournful and solemn amid all the
racket and times when righteousness seems
utterly rou'ed and driven ont by spirit of
resignation that rises above the line of simple
submissveness and expands into glowing and
bounteous hilarity. 1t is apparently a case
in which the expectancy Of profit so
allevates the sense of loss, that the whole
performance has the effect upon the eye of
the beholder of a bronze Jackson with its
paws in air. One does not know whether
when it strikes the ground it will settle to
graveyard gait toward the cemetery. or
burst into steeplcchase caner to the Of
fee of the Surrogate and the opening of
the will. Candor compels us to say, however,
that there seems far greater joy over the rid
dance than grief at the bereavement. The
cloud of eager heirs ovcrshadows the thin line
of mourncrs. Moumcrs. indeed, speaking
strictly, there are none. Watterson, and
perhaps Marble--if so be that sanity soul
still fingers OIL this bank and shOal OF
time--no doubt would be mOurners but
that they fout the fact of the old
mans death. These devotees insist that cold
ness signifies nothing; that the organization
Of funeral by no means establishes the es-
sential fact of corpse and that this Is pc
culiarly case where nothing but condition
T.
individually to the sense would warrant the
ordering a coffin or justify removal Of the
remains.
And now suppose, as so many of these pa
triots are eager to believe, the poor old man is
politically dead and done with. Do none of
them remember anything about him, except
that he was cold and sly and secretive that
he plotted privately, and trusted none of
them, and wrought them to his purpose, and
bent them to his plans. and compelled them
TO set him in their front, and then,
when they hoped through his leadership 10
grasp control and place and power. from cow
ardce, or conscience, or something else. failed
them ! Is there nothing but this that they
can remember of him. Why this old
man, in 1874, absolutely reached down
in treason and bemired in the filth
of corruption as it WAS, out of the
slough and set it on IFS feet. When Henry
A. Wise, at the head of the Democrats of
Virginia, stemmed the tide of Know Nothing
ism that threatened to sweep the country
when Horatio Seymour, upon the specious
pretext that his party favored more
vigorous prosecution Of the war, took
Ncw-York out of Republican hands
and saved his party from humiliation,
they did nothing, either of them. to compare
with the service this old man did for his
party in 1874. Whoever goes carefully back
over the political history of the past six years
will discover that in 1874, when Mr.. Tilden
came, or forced himself. to the front, the Demo-
cratic party had not single issue upon
which it could with any show of hon
esty or consistency, or with the faintest
prospect of success, go to the people. The
holt of the Liberal Republicans in 1872 in
favor of Administrative reform and against
maladministration and misrule in the South
furnished them their only CLEAN of hope.