The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-08-17
A PITIFUL ENDING.


lowed to remain in the chair that
Adams, Clay, Webster and a long line
of able statesmen, ending with Olney,
have graced, and to which he camG
over a path of humiliation such as
no other occupant of it ever trod, is
uncertain. That he will not fill out
the term is made certain by the con-
slant rumors that bear semblance of
authority; and, when he returns
to private life. there will be
the most pitiful ending of
public career that the country has wit
messed. In spite Of the kindly efforts
Of friends and the dutiful eXertions
of a sycophantic press to conceal his
condition, the fact is that Mr.. Sher-
man is in his dotage, with mental pow
ers failing, a memory so treacherous
as not to recall today what he did or
said yesterday, and that he is merely
a figurehead for his department, the
real secretary of state being the I'M
known from Canton, who came to
Washington first to be made a special
envoy to Cuba, a sort of modified min
lister paramount, and who was made
assistant secretary of state. Back OF
him are others, John W. Foster among
them, who was the irresponsible author
of the notorious dispatch to Anbassa-
dor Hay, of last May, to which the
name of John Sherman was appended.
The path he trod from the senate
to the state department was an open
one. 1t was not because of his emf
nent fitness, for, although for years
chairman Of the committee on foreign
relations in the senate, it was well
known that he gave to it's duties little
attention nor took in our foreign af-
fairs any interest. Finance had been
his study during all the thirty years
of his service, when he was not engaged
in discovering some compromise by
which his party might avoid a Difficult
ty or dodge duty. He was as vir-
tually removed from the senate to
make way for Mr.. Hanna as Simon
Cameron was removed from the secre-
taryship Of war, by Lincoln, to stop
his notorious populations, when he was
made minister to Russia. And, in sub
hitting to this indignity, Mr. Sherman
made no greater sacrifice of his dig
nifty, his convictions and his manhood
than he has frequently made for the
sake of his party; no greater than
when he made Eliza Pinkston a nation
al figure; when he became Visiting
statesman" to play part in the theft
of presidency; when he lent his name
and gave his sanction to the deal which
doubled the purchase of silver as the
price of the Mckinley act; nor when
he lets himself be made an implement
by which the North American CONNER
cial company tries to secure a monopo-
ly OF seal catching in Alaskan waters.
No man in it has deserved more
and received less of his party than
he; no man in it has. made so great
sacrifices of what all honorable men
hold sacred. He, and not Garfield
should have been rewarded in 1880 with
the presidential nomination for the
part he played in 1876; he and not Har-
rison should have been the choice in
1888, and would have been, had it not
been for the purchases of delegates
made by the man who sits with him
now at the council ta bla &c coo-o+, ,,.
of war, and adds to the humiliation
involved in his making way in the
senate for Hanna. Instead of the
presidency, rounding off a career not
without honor and real public service
he will shortly end it through a re-
quested and enforced resignation" OF
an empty honor, given him solely to
make place for the man whose NUN
and contributed millions placed a
'mortgaged man. in the. presidential
chair, and who has exercised his an
pointive power in redeeming the mort
cages to the scandalizing of the nation.
The termination of forty years Of pub
lie life becomes all the more pitifuI
when compared with that Of his broth
er, who, when the Republican partv
was in dire distress for an "avaiIa-
BILE" candidate for the presidency
bluntly told those who besougbt hin,
to accept it that he would take neither
the nomination nor the election if pre-
scented to him upon silver plate, but
that he would keep the plate" Ona
can imagine, from William T. Sher-
mans manner Of resenting the insult
Secretary Stanton had put upon him.
how he, in his brothers place, would
have treated the emissary who dared
to convey to him the proposition that
he retire from the senate to make wav
for Mark A. Hanna.
THE FROTH OF NATIONS.