New-York tribune., 1881-03-23
ANOTHER LOST COMMITTEE

We do not quite make out whether it is
through inadycrt and absence of mind that
the Democratic party keeps losing things ot
one sort and anOthcr-herc committee and
there Senator, a leaf out Of memory n scrap
of history. or a plank ont OF a platform; or
whether like mariners navigating unknown
seas, they puIrO5ely send out an occasional
boats crew in search Of undiscovered Spice
Islands, or drop overheard resolutions in sealed
bottles to give information to those 0hO may
sail that course after them. There may be both
accident and design in 1T it rea''y looks as
though they were followed by n strange
fatality. If they send out q committee, for IN
stance, nobody knows whether it will ever
come back, or where it will be when next heard
FROM Take it all III all, and We venture to say
that the Democratic party runs greater risk
in sending out committees than the Government
does in equipping Arctic expeditions. Some
times they turn up battered and bruised after
long absence, but Often they are never heard
from after they are put in commission.
We would not undertake to enumerate the
losses experienced in the past three or four
years. but few Of the more recent ones just
now occur to us. There was Spriggs. for in
stance, OF Utica, who went out tom CoDven-
ton at Saratoga to persuade Governor Seymour
to accept a nomination in 1S76-was heard
from by telegraph the same night, then disap-
peared, and although good deal inquired
after, was not definitely heard from for two or
three years. when he turned up in State Con-
ventiOn, sitting on q front seat, looking meek as
Moses, and apparently unconscious that he had
ever been lost. I here was another committee
that started out to find Governor Seymour in
the spring of 1579-this kind of committee
seems always to get losG-started from the resi-
dence OF MIR. August Belmont, in this city. and
was never heard Of afterward. THE TRIBUNE
has repeatedly urged that an expedition be
fitted QUO to look up this committee, but its ap-
peals have found no response in the Democratic
breast
In the last three Congresses, how many, alas
how many committees have been equipped
with stationery and stenographers. and power
to send for persons and papers, with mittinuses,
aud sergeants-at-aTms, and attachments for
contempt. and all the requisites for scoopinR
and sitting and deep-seA dredging, and been
sent out with the most sahRuine hopes either to
come back empty OF everything but the most
Improbable Of mud, d never to return. 1t was
only the other day-the3 occurrence is so fresh
that even now the wall of Benjamin Hill Ii
searching the Pacific cahons with the piercing
conundrums, Where is he 7" "Who's got him 2
@Will they keep hlm T'-the party lost one entire
Senator-a little one to be sure, but he was all
the world to them This was a loss they felt tC
An unusual degree, for on his vote hung, If moi
all the law, good many of the profits.
So these losses accumulate upon them. The
Young Mems Democratic Club" OF this city
an organization with very little besides 1T
freshness to lose-ha lost a committee. Thu
association can i'll afford the loss 1t is not Q
large body. but 1t Ia one of the most serious