New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1883-10-21
THE RhIGHI SIDE.


Who does not remember how some people,
durinQ the war for the Union, could see nothing
but the shoddy clothes and paper shoes, the
bounty-iumpers and the incapable generals, the
b,updcrs of Congress and the little bell Of Mr.
Stantonl But Chief-Justice Colcridgc, man
of rare ability and justice, looking back at that
time of trial, sees only that a mighty Nation
then became truly great and grand, and by its
heroic devotion gave new honor to the Anglo
Saxon name. Possibly, if we lift our eyes
from the spccks and flaws, and take broader
survey of the times in which we live, we shall
find that there is something in these also which
impartial history will remember when the frail-
ties of the hour shall have been forgotten.
History will take notice, for instance, that
" turbulent democracy" flushed with the cx-
crcse of gigantic power III war, and conscious
that nothing could resist its arms from Panama
to the Pole has lived eighteen years in peace
with all its neighbOrs, never once thinking OF
aggression. More than a million veteran
soldiers, to whom the mOnOtOny and the tolls Of
peace were strange and wcaIisome at first,
have been absorbed into the body of the pco-
pic without single attempt to cmbroll the
couutry in civil strife or foreign war. The
energy and daring, the discipline and power
of combined action, which made war terrible
and decisive, have achieved for the Nation
during eighteen years of peace such triunphs in
arts and industries, such marvellous progress
in wealth and general prosperity as no other
Nation has ever made in similar time. The
march of railways across the continent and up
and down all over the land, the spinning OF the
electric spiders web in every nook and corner
of the country, the opening Of mines and wells
that have poured forth wealth by the hundred
millions, the building of thousands of factories
and foundlics, mills and furnaces, where armies
larger than the one which disbandcd in 1860
are battling against want and cOnqucrng a new
world for us every ycar-all these things will
appear, in the clear light of history, better worth
seeing than many of the blOts that mar the pic
ture to our eyes.
1t will bc said of this present time too, that
the administration of Government National,
State and local, was on the whole never more
faithfully performed peculation here and
there seems large to us, because we are close to
II Int we should not be blind to the strong
sentiment of public virtue which is swift to pun
ish such offences, nor to the general purity of
public service which almost everywhere pre-
wallis An excellent test is the steady reduction
of public indebtedness. Not only the United
States, which has been causing trouble by the
very rapidity of its debt-payment, but the
States. counties, cities, and towns, have been
diminishing indebtedness steadily for some
years. The streets are no longer crowded with
agents to sell city bonds, and the communities
that repudiate OF shiTk can no longer escape
the sense of shame. Here and there bad men
get into office, bat their own partisans are
ashamed of them; here and there community
Is seen which has failed TO. set its affairs OH an
honest and solvent basis, but the evil is not
spreading.s
Then the people, Also have passed through a
severe commercial and industrial trial, thus far
with honor. The wild outcries of " soft money"