New-York tribune., 1879-03-12

of the country, and which seems to have
broken ont with more violence than
usual since the debate in the Senate
in which objection was raised 10
making Mr. Jefferson Davis pensioner
upon the Government. The suggestion was
made in the course of that debate that, in
Justice to its own dignity, the Government
could hardly reward with a pension man
who had not only conspicuously cOnspired
against it, but had refused to express regret
foi it even I'm so indirect n way as by asking
TO be restored to the privileges OF citizen
ship. 1t was this apparently harmless. and
certainly not unnatural suggestion, that
evoked the Georgia appeal and adJuranon.
"The ex-President of the Confederacy," says
the writer, in fine tropical Outburst, " has the
"saered trust of not dishOn0ring In his own per-
{" son, by a craven petition for forgiveness the
"boly cause of the South, which, though tram
pied upon, is not lost, and never shall be
"wlIile there's an echo left to air." And
after more of it he calls on Almighty God to
forbid IT, because "the worst thing that
could befall the South would be so shame
" full a degradation in the person OF Mr.. Davis"
This is language that indicates excitement !;
the kind of language that man uses In a
baTrOom-where appeals to the Deity are
most common just before he throws tum-
bier One naturally inquiries what it is that
Mr. Davis is called upon to do which
wifi be such "shamcful degradation
that the Almighty is specially invoked to
forbid it. We really cannot see that he has
been called upon to do anything whatever.
1t was said that he had not done certain
things which thousands of citizens OF the
South had done without thinking it involved
shameful degradation" and it was thought
to be due the dignity of the Gov
ernment that until be should do them he
should not be made o pensiOner upon the
Government bounty. Is there anything i'll
this to call out this FOrbidit-A Almighty
"God" explosion Would it not have been
better to hold this call in reserve against
some more thrilling crisis .
AS to Mr.. DAVIS, If we may be permitted TO
express an opinion of him, we should say that
there IS nothing in his character or record,
or public services, to justify the general
bounce Of Indignation through the South
whenever he receives the treatment of an
ordinary person. There is no need of getting
so extraordinarily mad when his name
is mentioned; no need of such tremen-
dous passion because tho Government
which fOrgave his treason Declines except
upon reasonable conditions, to pension him !;
no need to shrek Forbid it, Almighty GOdV
if anyone intimates that he ought to ask the
pardon of the Government before he obtains
it, For we submit that he is not by any
means heroic person; that the figure he cuts
upon the page Of history is rather the reverse OF
heroic. He is not success. The whole world
knows him as a failure, and only as failure.
The editors who ramp and rave about him
cannot make him out anything else. The Sen
atOrs who swelled up the other night in the
Senate and said he had done no more than they
had, dld nothing to dignity him or themselves.
1t WAS maenanimOus in them, perhaps, to
admit that they had been as guilty as he
but the sense in which they spoke was other
than that. They forgot that they were there by
grace of the Government; they assumed that
aside from their pardons they were in
the Senate by right, and that hIr. Davis
had tho samo right. All these people
make a great mistake. The rebel
lion was failure; it Is none the
less SO for calling it "war between the
Estates" Mr.. Davis is failure; he is none
;he less so for being called 1.-THE ex-PresdeDt
"of the Confederacy." There's no use in
getting angry because Mr.. Davis is expected
to ask for pardon before he gets it. Other
people, just as proud and brave as he, have
done it. There was nothing great in his adj
ministration of affairs during the rebellion ;
all accounts agree that his escape from Rich
mond and capture by United States
troops was decidedly unheroic; and since
then he has been an ordinary person in
the insurance business. This man cannot,
at this period in his and the cOuntry's history,
be, by any sort of process, made statuesque.
The grandiloquent style in which the Southern
newspapers talk about him no more fits him
than the dress in which he was captured. 1t
overcomes him, and makes both him and
them ridiculous.