National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1881-03-03
The Last Day.


To-day will be the last one of an i'm
beetle Congress. Not an act can be as
cribed to it having any smack of wisdom.
The President put it to work in the spring
of 1879 by call of an extra session, rem
dered necessary by the factious effort of
the Democratic House of the preceding
Congress to stop the wheels of Govern
ment 1t made record at that session
which SO alarmed the country that from
the day Of its adjournment the fate of the
Democratic party was sealed. The easy
-partisanship of the administration
had opened the door for Democratic fu-
| ture eiftheleaders of that doomed organiza-
! ton had been possessed OF the most or
dinary intelligence. But it became dis
! eased with the old heresies of nullifica-
ton, resistance TO United States laws, and
! general cuSsedness," and sank far be-
low the level of the average intelligence
Of its own membership. The Republican
party gave the lower House Of Congress
| over to the Democracy at most
| opportune time. Our defeat in the
congressional elections of 1874 was not
due to any new confidence of the people
! in the Democracy, but rather to the
panic among many of our OWN leaders,
which quickly extended to the party at
| large. The session of 1928 was devoted
! largely to investigations ordered in
Difference TO the desires Of the oppo-
sition. We had class of men of promi-
nence in our party who thought the
best way to strengthen the Repub-
lican cause before the country was to
show that as a rule Republicans were
| thieves, and to exhibit them in the atti-
tude Of expelling each other from the
party. They went upon the plan adopted
by the old market woman in selling her
butter. "Is your butter clean ?'' asked
buyer. Well, I should think it ought to
be-" said the old woman; it took me
and my three daughters all night to pick
the hairs out of it." The butter did not
sell. The questioner went in search
of some which had not required
such purgation. And SO the people,
taking the Republican purifiers at
their word, preferred to pass by the Re-
publican candidates. in the election of 1874
and vote for men whose party did
not claim to be 50 rotten. The surrender
Of the lower House to the Democrats in
1874 was the result of cowardice and
treachery ia Our own ranks. The inves-
LEGATIONS were frivolous, and brought to
light no facts which need have damaged
the party; but the eaeerness of
some political quacks to establish them
selves i'll business ledthem to raise howl
that general Generalization prevailed
which they alone could cure. The public,
which isalwaysa hypochondriac, believed
itself dangerously i'll, and desperately re-
solved to take the dose prescribed by the
quacks. The result has been six years Of
a Democratic House of Representatives,
and such a depletion on the Republican
side of the Senate in 1875 that in 1877 and
1879 the small margin was easily over
thrown. The failure in 1874 to sell the
Republican butter, in which so many
hairs were falsely pretended to have
been found, led to the election of
Democratic Senators from the States of
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania Ohio, and Indiana, and
the debilitatcd condition of our party
continued and led to the mild policy
which in 1877 gave us additional Demo-
cratic Senators from New Jersey and Il
linois. The dry-rot of civil-service reform
and the despair Of party men gave the
Democratic side of the Senate further re-
crU,its in 1879 from Ohio. Indiana: Oregon,
and California.
The Democratic party managers thought
these disasters had destroyed the Repub-
lican party, and they entered upon the
enjoyment of their new field of conquest
as spendthrift enters upon the estate
for which he long has waited. They have
now run through. They have hesitated
at no folly, feared no criticism, believed
in no end to their power. Steadily they
pressed forward to capture the White
House and the Supreme Court. They
gave the people sufficient foretaste of
their intentions to remove all danger of
their success. To-day is the last one of
their lease even Of their power to obstruct.
Let us hope they will go into liquidation,
and that we have done forever with the
Democratic party as political organiza-
ton