The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1890-10-08
@attbman 4 gournal.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER s, 1890.
$50 English, You Know"


When it is possible TO honestly APP
prove the words or acts of political
opponent, we are glad to do it. George
William Curtis certainly comes nearer
to being a democrat than he approaches
republication, and no man has been
more vehement in his denunciations of
the republican party than he. On the
score of its professions of civil service
reform and its failure to live fully up
to them, he lashes the party frequently
and severely. Much, too, of what he
says on this subject is wholly unde-
served, for the republican party has
done something for the cause of civil
service reform, and the believers in
that panacea of political ills should be
thankful rather than censorious. Yet
the sincerity of purpose of Mr.. Curtis
in these and other structures is not to
be questioned. Nor is his American
ism anything but genuine. Particularly
pleasant is it to find, in desert of
fault.fnding at American institutions,
such as his mugwump friends are given
to, this oasis of patriotic optimism:
when hear of buying and selling
votes, of the recklessness of party
spirit, of jobs and bribery, of the prosti-
tuition and degradation of the public
service, of political corruption and
charlatanry, do not recall the men of
the continental congress and the con-
stitutional convention, but l remem-
Der Walpole and Newcastle, and George
ILLS agents turning parliament into
market, and Edmund Burke's denunci-
atoms of the rotten boroughs and his
trumpet call for reform, and the more
recent and amusing melodrama of Lord
lingo Beaconsfeld, and to my English
critic who assures me of his poignant
grief at seeing in my country what l
also behold, can only reply So Eng
lish, you know" This was said at
the meeting of the Civil Service Re-
form League at Boston, Wednesday
evening.
There is not the slightest question as
to the comparative political virtue of
the two nations. Scandal, corruption,
injustice, are to be seen on almost
every page of English history; and, in
quieter way, perhaps, English politics
to-day are as false and selfish as ever.
A recent writer has made the remark
that it would be well-nigh impossible to
find among Englishmen in public life
one who would not laugh at the idea of
carrying the ordinary rules of private
honor into political matters. The in
variable rule is, one would infer, that
politics are like love and war, and all's
fair. No such standard of public
morality exists in this country, despite
the assertion of Senator ingalls, that, as
a matter of fact, the Decalogue has no
place in politics. The resentment
aroused by this remark was sufficient
evidence of political conscience not
totally scared. We have been accus-
toned to hear the expression, $50
English, you know" uttered in refer
ence to some act or fact thought to be
of eminent responsibility, because it
was practiced by set of English peo-
pie supposed to be endowed with the
highest culture. Will the imitators of
English custom like the application of
the expression to the most unprinci-
pied and rotten political life any
English-speaking race has been guilty
of living?