Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1891-04-16
A GREET CHANGB IN THE SENATE
The Shining Republican Lights Have
Nearly All Gone Out.


WAsHINeToN, April 10-'i'he retire.
ment Of Mr.. Edmunds from the Senate
will make a great gap in the Republican
ranks there. He has played an inn
portant' part in the committee work of
that body for many years. AS chairman
OF the committee on judiciary and us n
prominent member of the committee on
foreign relations he had much to do
with fashioning the most important
legislation enacted by Congress during
the past quarter of a century.
Working in the privacy of his com.
mittee,room Mr.. Edmunds figured but
little in the stormy bouts in the Senate,
but he has always been distinguished
figure there, and Just how useful and
capable he was will be made apparent
to the party when the time comes to fill
his vacant place.
Mr.. Edmunds seldom delivered set
speech, but was most effective in run
ming debate and on observations occu-
plying little time and which were APP
parently impromptu One of his favorite
performances was to drop in from his
committee-room while some fluent sena-
tor was working off a stump speech for
home consumption and, affecting to
take great interest in the subject, put
questions to him with no other object in
view than to develop the speakers lack
OF information about the theme he was
80 learnedly treating. lie was abso-
lutely impartial about this pastime.
When demonstrated with ON one occa.
sion about this practice as being unkind
Mr. Edmunds replied, in substance, that
no man big enough Intellectually to se-
cure seat in the United States Senate
should put such forum to the uses of
the stump; that the Senate was the place
for the discussion of public business In
business-like way, and that anything
like fustian or parade there was undigni-
fed and unseemly.
Not even the speeches of Mr.. ingalls,,
which always packed the galleries and
insured an unusually large attendance
of senators, could seduce Mr.. Edmunds
from his labors at the committee table.
He stoutly resisted every form of popu-
lar eloquence as feature of senatorial
duty or station.
The loss of Mr.. Edmunds to his party
emphasizes the great change that has
taken place in the Senate within the
past few years. 1t was long the lboast
of the Republicans that their side of the
chamber far outranked in intellectual
vigor the other side, and in support of
the boast they would point to the pres
ence there of Edmunds, Evarts, ingalls,,
Sherman and Allison. But all is
changed now. Eyarts and Ingalls, have
been put out, Edmunds goes ont of his
own accord, while Sherman and Allison,
because of their disappointed Presiden-
tial aspirations, shed no longer the light
they once did.
But on the Democratic side there is
positively an illumination of talent. Mr..
Carlisle, Governor Hill, German, Vest,
Mcpherson and Judge Morgan will at
the next session form galaxy worthy
of the Senate in its best days. In fact |
the defeat of Mr.. Eustis of Louisiana, is |
the only loss that the Democracy has
sustained in the Senate in some years.
Every other change has been for the
better until now the comparison is de-
cidedly against the Republicans Of that
body.
1t is announced that Mr.. Edmunds
will spend his winters in the south
hereafter, owing to the delicate state of
his daughters health as well as of his
own. He will continue his practice at
the bar, however
The opinion here is that Secretary of |
War Proctor will succeed Mr. Edmunds,
and that the vacancy thus made in the
Cabinet will be filled by the appoint
ment of Gen A lper