St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-04-28
DISHLLSION

the active participation OF women in politics
would have a tendency to purify and uplift
the corrupt and m~ercenary methods now and
heretofore obtaining among men, and bring
about al indally honest transaction of public
affairs.
So impressed has the common mind been
by the reiteration of this advantage, that
the multitudes depressed by the daily ex-
position of unabashed profigacy in mascu-
line politics has yearned for female suffrage
as the great corrective power, the big illum-
mating electric light in the gloom.
Fancy then the shock of disillusion which
the letter of Cynthia E. Cleveland to Gov.
Ordway, of Dakota has given the susceptible
and credulous multitude aforesaid.
The epistle of Cynthia to his Excellency
n. G.. Ordway, whose initials are curiously,
and as far as noncompliance is represented
suggestive of the alphabetical conversation
of another famous legislator, the Hon. Bard
well Slote, will bear frequent reprint to be-
come memorable with some remarkable cor
~respondence of the same kidney whereof
'EMy Dear Hubbell, :" and 'Sound Ones, Fare
NNSHJ NNoIiC ISSCA iASbdlOCOs SdloS 1n
thia to N. G. (No. 90) Ordway.
Hon. Governor-I have written you at Pierre
and Bismarck, but l see by the papers that you
are on your way to Yankton. l will deed you an
undivided quarter interest in my presumption
of Highmore, if you will at once appoint
o.. L. Cole and L. L.. Hudley as two of the TWEEN
ty commissioners. No one can raise any objec-
ton to either of them. I am sure O.. E. Cole
and myself could control ninety-nine one-hun-
dredths of the votes of Hyde county.
This is the unvarnished directness of
bribery, and it is an ugly revelation. 1t shows
a certainty of the Appropriateness of n. G..
towards whom it would appear there wasn't
any need of coy and cautious advances.
enough by experience, intuition or divina-
ton to mean business without any prelimi-
nary taffy whatever. The ''moneyed con-
sideration'' is down in black and white, with
as little circumlocution as that which charac-
terizes the crisp and unmistakable correspon-
dence of Mr.. c. P. Hunting ton.
But then he doesn't belong to the sex
which was going into the publication of poll
tics, and had a mission. Mr.. Huntington
was too much of a trader to be affected by
aught save positive and palpable material in
~terests. His spirit wasn't touched, y except
to sordid issues, and he didn't fool away the
approaches to power and gain with hypocriti-
cal assumptions. He quotes the prices Of his
purchasable humans with calm conciseness,
and the figures which will secure the official
~stragglers waiting for more.
Yet for all there is a certain honesty in his
method. Levies and subsidies are COM
passed, governors and legislatures as an
unit are turned over to his purposes and he
pays the cash for them. That was his mis-
sion if he had any, but he would not call it
by that name, and neither would he mix his
work so that one part would tell against the
other in case of defeat. For example, he
would not be a boss lobbyist, a wholesale
buyer OF politicians in droves, and a item
perance lecturer too.
But Mrs. Cynthia E. Cleveland is, and now
the cynical may be inclined to say: Drink
ing is bad, yet is bribery any better! Sobri-
ETY. is admissible, but the brain which keeps
itself clear to snare the dubious principled,
and to buy the lax and INSCRIPTIONS to its
selfish uses, is it any higher morally than the
drunkard's2
These are questions for specialists in vir-
tue to adjust among themselves, yet the dis
elimination is scarcely fair towards the sin
ners whose vice is made the objects of mis-
sions, crusades, and unions, while the agi-
tators may be SO reprehensibly sober as to
bribe a governor and corrupt his official i'm
partially and integrity.
T'is merely a.preference in moral oblio-
uity, and perhaps if these things must be.
we are not sorry that women eschew drinking
and advocate temperance, even if they be-
come proficient in the political bribery tao
tics of representative American statesmen
nowadays. 1t may be largely Unsuitable on
the plea of having to beat the old boy with
his own weapons. But it is sad all the same
to see history repeating itself Notwithstanding
the vaunted superiority and progress of
the age. Men and women are pretty much
whatthey have always been in public life. We
learn from Lecky's, England in the eight
zenith century that the systematic corruption
of members of parliament began under
SIQl1CS LIZ, L IL hhOoO 1NlSh ~ d DIdCIlCcu
to the largest extent. 1t was confined under
his successor, and the number of scandals
rather increased than diminished after the
revolution.
Sir j. Trevor, q speaker of the House of
Commons, had been voted guilty of a high
crime andmisdemeanor for receiving a bride
of 1000 guineas from the city of London. A
Secretary of the Treasury, Mr.. Grey, had been
sent to the Tower for taking a bride to induce
him to pay the arrears Il to a regiment.
Lord Ranelagh, a paymaster of the forces,
had been expelled for defalcations in his
office.
In the current news of the day three
names readily assume to no improvement on
those early politicians, although professedly
belonging to the sublimated party working
in the interests of God and humanity
Keifer, Knox and SWAIN.
Now turning to the women of that time, we
learn that Bolingbroke secured his return
from exile by bribing the Duchess of Ken
dial, the kings ~favorite, with $40, 900. Men
like Chesterfield, Swift, Pulteny, Gay and
Bolingbroke made use of Mrs. Howard to
win concessions from her royal g protector. -
A curious letter has been preserved,
wherein Mrs. Pitt, mother of the great Lord
Chatham, endeayored by a bride of 1000