New-York tribune., 1879-03-28
YooRHEES AND HIS SPONGE.


caucus. This appears to have been one OF
those raging caucuses in which able states
mon who have been ont of the statesman
business several years and have just resumed
business at the old stand, got up ana
grated their teeth and loaned a'
tbe mouth when they thought oil the
way things had been going ON In ther ap-
senee. The gentlemen who, on account Oh
their success in establishing rich ana pow
erful Confederacy in the South, nave peen
sent for to take charge OF our Government
and make sim lar success OF IT. expresseu
themselves with great earnestness to the eIiect
that since they had been away everything had
been very badly managed. There was very
general disposition to regard the PRESIDENT as
an obstruction; much as sincerely hungry
wild beasts in menagerle regard the pars
that separate them from raw meat. MI.
Eaton of Connecticut, who has that degree OF
familiarity with the Deity that he calls Coo
to witness the most commonplace remarks,
much as he snaps his fingers for page, ana
who can probably hurl a lofder scorn
than any American Senator extant, fairy
withered the President in some remarks III
which he smoke of him as the man at the
"Whte House." And VOorhees-the question
under discussion being as to the election
laws and how to fix them up so that Demo-
Gratis nav vote as many times as they please
at an election without impertinent supervision
Voorhees, shook himself loose like boom
derrick resuscitated by a fresh appropriation,
and howled that he was for wlplng out
the election laws with sponge. VI all Tie
orators now engaged III burying the melan-
choly memories of the past. there is proDaply
not one who flirts more powerful spade uhah
Voorhees, He is earnest to that degree that
you'd think he was digging cellar Tor Dlock
of flats instead of a mere grave for melancholy
memories.
And he is the second statesman who has
come at us with a sponge. The other was
that enthusiastic Missourian Mr.. Bland, who
grapped the financial question in the last
Congress, and having made up his mind
what he wanted to do with the currency,
made his announcement to the country,
accompanied by the statement that II
ne was not permitted to go ahead with his
plan he would wipe out the whole National
debt as with sponge. The sponge was
comparatively new weapon at that time. 1t
had been used upon occasions, to be
sure, with more or less effect-several
Southern communities had applied IL sue-
cessfuly to municipal indebtedness and cor
porate obligations, and there had been gen
eral whisking of it over the debit sides OF
their states in 1S61-but it had not up to
BANDS time been openly brandished as
weapon of offence. His threat was SO frightful
that Kentucky newspaper gave the alarm at
once that the Devil was lOOse-thOugh it
WAS the first recorded instance of his
starting out with that kind of weapon-and
said Bland must be appeased or the National
debt and all that we hold dear would be wiped
ont. The terror was so universal that Congress
COMPROMISED with him by enacting that ninety
cents should be a dollar. Thereafter Bland
subsided; and from the fact that about
that time several Western streams under
went freshets, it Is believed that he went
West and wrIng out his sponge. And now
comes Voorhees,, than whom no man now III
public life is more familiar with the uses of
the sponge-and lie goes for wiping out the
election laws with it. Proposes it in
one of those warm caucuscs wherein ey
ery man kndles with patriotic rage
at the thought that the party is within one of
q hundred thousand Offices. 1t is not yet
known positively what the effect will be.
Doubtless the same kentucky authority that
urged concession to BANDS demand will
shortly advise something by way Of cOmprO-
mise to placate Voorhees,. Then we shall
know what to do.
But really what a singular change has come
over these leading statesmen since they went
out from us III 1861. Not so much change
of purpose as of weapons. There was always
much talk of wiping out, but when they went
away the plan was to wipe out every
thing with powder and ball, and swords
and pistols, aud musketry and artillery. They
seem to be, IN the language of the vulgar,
still con the wipe" but they do it now with
that less noisy and perhaps more effective
weapon, the sponge. Mr.. Voorhees, points his
obliterative sponge at the election laws, just
as Mr.. Bland did his at the National
debt Mr. Stephens is preparing his sponge
for the banking laws, and Others are
insisting that all the legislation of these
&" eighteen years of Radical misrule " shall be
wired ont before Congress adjOurnS 1t is an
army with sponges; an army Of wipers; and
they seem bent on wiping out everything
that stands between them and absolute power.
We doubt if they succeed. They may wipe out
the election laws, and perhaps some other things
that have been done i'll the past eighteen
years, but there are at least two things on
the board absolutely necessary for them to
wipe out before they can accomplish their
purpose, which their sponges cannot touch.
One is their own record, and the other is
some clphers.
MISSOURI AND REPCDfATION
The State of Missouri seems to be emulous
of the fame of South Carolina as the leading
,,,,lI;G.o,.n, Eor oo,oa yoa,, af.ox