The Portland daily press., 1880-01-20


able merely to the individual idiosyncrasies OF o
journalist who, for some reason or other, or no
reason at all, was incurably welded to the
doctrine that total depravity is the normal
condition of a large majority OF the men who
are charged with the conduct OF state affairs,
it might not be worth while to combat them.
But unfortunately they are entertained by
considerable number of persons whose office 1t
is to influence public opinion They are taught
in our seminares Of learning, and permeate
our periodical literature. They find voice
sometimes in our lecture rooms and too often
from the pulpit 1t is thought to be an evil
dence of "culchaw" to hurl vague and sweep
ing denunciations at public functionaries of
every rank and grade. College professors are
too apt to indulge in them, and the students
whom it is their province to teach, graduate
with this poison of harsh judgment infused in
to their moral systems. They communicate it
in their turn to others by whom they are ac-
cepted as authority because they had excep-
tional opportunities to acquire learning. They
diffuse it in the social circle, and ventilate
their spleen in newspaper paragraphs when
ever they can get them inserted. They are
especially careful never to descend to particu-
lars. nor to venture upon any specifications. III
they were to do that they would break down at
once, for they never had any facts wherewith
to substantiate their scandalous diatribes. 1t
Is easy to accuse, but proving the truth of an
accusation is quite a different affair, and these
gentry never trouble themselves about any
thing that involves the labor of inquiry and
research Such lofty spirits are altogether
l,,,s % la4o hau
fallen into the habit of believing everything
that IS said or written against public men with
out any testimony at all Or in spite Of convinc-
ing evidence to the contrary. They reject
with equal readiness anything that is uttered
in defense or commendation Of the objects Of
their i'll VIII no matter how strongly it may be
corroborated by collateral evidence or however
intrinsically probable it may be. They are re-
markable alike for their credulity and their
incredulity, and they display the former when
evil words are spoken, and the latter when
charitable sentiments fall upon their ears.
They are not content with passing censorious
Judgments upon their fellow men, who happen
to be incumbents of public trusts,
but they merclessly inveigh against all who
disagree with them, lampooning them as "ma-
chine men, political hacks, "blind parti-
sans" and applying other equally forcible epi-
thets to them. And this sort of hash isserved up
as the very choicest diet that can be dealt out to
the admirers of "high toned journalism. The
Freshmen take it in with infantile relish, the
Seniors pronounce it lawfully jolly, by Jove,"
and the boardng-school misses declare that it's
'real NIGEL" And the young men go out into
the world with their hair and their names
parted in the middle, and drawl out their dis
approval of the whole framework OF govern
ment with an affectation Of superiority that
would be as amusing as the acting of Dun
dreary if it did not present so painful specta-
Gle of the decline of true manhood in our edu-
cational institutions.
There is another class of defamers Of public
men, who are doing the same work in an en-
tirely different sphere. They are the Commu-
nists. They are wholly without refinement
and express themselves with coarseness and
brutality that is a shocking offense to decency
Still they are the natural allies of their more
cultured brethren and are pursuing the same
end from different point of departure. The
Boston preacher who weaves into his Thanks
giving sermon a fierce arraignment of the
leaders of the dominant party, disputing their
sincerity and aspersing their motives, employs
phrases which would find very little apprecia-
ton in the congregation of his coadjutor, the
sand-lot orator of the Pacific. They would
both, perhaps, be equally averse to exchanging
pulpits and their respective audiences would
be quite as unwilling they should. And yet
there is substantial agreement between them
in their purpose to undermine the faith of the
people in the integrity of their rulers and they
are striving in their several ways to make the
! American Republic reproach and by-word
among the nations. Their respective diatribes
are quoted and paraded in foreign lands as
demonstrations that popular government is
failure, and that the perils and sacrifices of our
patriotic sires have lost their efficacy through
the degeneracy of their unworthy sons.
Now if there were any grains of truth in this
wholesale impeachment, there would be less
| ground of complaint against its authors and
| promoters, though even then the methods re-
sorted to for correcting the alleged abSses
would be open to serious objections. But ev-
| erybody who will take the trouble to institute
a comparison between the past and present
| between the purity of administration in other
| countries and our own, will have no difficulty
in arriving at the conclusion that the affairs OF
| this government have been, ever since its
| foundation as honestly and wisely conducted
as those of any nationality on the globe, and
that there has been from the beginning until
now a steady and continuous elevation in the
standard of official rectitude. OF late years the
| improvement has been marked Instances OF
malfeasance of any kind have been extremely
| rare. Enormous public revenues have been
| collected and disbursed with remarkable fideli-
ty. Vast sums of money, passing through the
| hands of myriads of agents, many of them
poor and all of them inadequately paid for
their services, have been accounted for with
scrupulous exactness. Whenever a default has
! occurred, the offender has been swiftly and
sternly punished A single act of venality not
q whit more fragrant than a great many
| which history records as having happened in
former days without eliciting any very
general indignation, has, within the
last decade affixed upon the unhappy perpetra-
tor occupying one of the highest positions of
the State an ineffaceabe brand of shame. No
guilty man has escaped, and even suspected
person, against whom it was impossible after
the most searching scrutiny to make out A case
that would justify conviction, has nevertheless
been irretrievably damaged in reputation by
the incessant iteration of the attacks upon
him in spite of the fact that they were not sus-
tanned. Rowing commissioners composed OF
hostile and preiudiced partisans, have ran
sacked the public archives with unrestricted
license in quest of evidence inculpating the
incumbents of office, and have been compelled
to confess, with manifest reluctance, that they
were unable to discover any proofs to sustain
the accusations which formed the basis of their
inquiries. Every bureau of every department
has been unroofed and its transactions laid
open to general view. A glaring flood of light
has been thrown in upon all the operations OF
GoNernment. II there had been any wrong
doing it would have been simply impossible to
have concealed it. The widest publicity has
been given to every proceeding and the most
unfriendly censors have had free access to all
sources of information.
The results OF all this exhaustive explora-
ton are such as ought to silence forever the
tongue of calumny and cause the heart Of
every citizen who feels love for and pride in