The commonwealth. (Greenwood, Miss.) 1896-1923, 1897-05-20
Fantastic Political Jsdrueuts.

A fine exhibition of ignorance. dishonesty and swagger is found in a article
by Charles R Miller entitled Has the Senate pegeneratedr" which is published
in the May number Of a leading magazine. 1t takes the affirmative side Of the
proposition and purports to be IN answer to Senator Hoar who took the other
side n a magazine contribution . month or two ago In attempting to show
tina. the senate has degeneratad even In the last twenty years Mr. Miller tells
that when Mr. Hoar entered that body 10 1877 the lsmented Beck sat there from
Kentucky, and Newton Booth, the finest mind ever placed at the service Of the
state of California in either house of congress" One Of Kentuckys present SEN
ators, William Lindsay, is the equal of the '1amented Beck" in ability and char,
acter, and the nan who preceded Lindsay and succeeded Beck, John G. Carlisle,
was Becks superior Gwin was at least the equal Of Booth in ability, McDou.
gall was a greater orator than Booth, while in Broderck, a self made man, who
was killed by Terry nearly forty years ago. California had in the senate a man
who was immeasurably the superior OF Booth in ability, character, courage and
influence.
The writer here mentioned says that among the members of the senate TO-DAY
there are not more than a "sore who are in any way dshnguishable from the
mute herd whose senatorial activities are limited to the hunting of patronage
and the arr of private pension bills" He gives the score of names but those Of
Culom, Teller, Turpie, Lindsay, the two Jones, Yes, Harris, Spooner and Nor
rl are omitted. All these men; and others who could be named and who are
not in The list. are more than patronage hunters and private pension hin lohhv.
lists Why are they left out of the lhs The e1travagent estimate of Beck as
compared with his successor and the absurd Judgment of Booth al COMPARED
with some of his predecessors ar probably dine to ignorance mt h om;ssipn g
these ten names must be due to dishonesty The person who prepared the list
evidently had a table of senators before him, and he ca scarcely be sc unfamil.
lar with contemporary politics and statesmen as to nnocenty put these men, by
implication, into the before mentioned category. He left them out of his list be.
cause their inclusion would have swened it beyond twenty, and thus have given
the senate of today a better showing than would have been good for his degener
alton hypothesis.
A long list of men who were in the senate some time between 1913 and 1858
is printed. 1t contains, in addition to the ilustrous group of Calhoun, Clay,
Webster Benton, Cas, Seward, Jefferson Davis and Douglas the names of Dick
inson Dx, Levi Woodbury. Simon Cameron Fremont, James A. Bayard and
Henry L Foote The latter group of men are respectable, but to call them
giants as the article mentioned does is ridiculous They dilute the list in
quality as much as they swell it in quantity. All of them can easily be matched
in ability in the present and recent senates Apparently juxtapostim-they
were associates Of Clay, Webster and Calhoun and remotenes- they figured in
the exciting days before the war have deluded the writer of that article into the
belief that they were a higher order of men than Ire found in the senate in tbee
these lists he remarks with an air Of easy superiority. Besides he added II
am afraid the Massachusetts senator is not imbued with the scientific snirit %
minology Of the older and sonnder men of science, the Darwinsan nd Spencers and
Tyndals who have traced for is the laws of change in the organic world " His
familiarity with the reasoning and Technology" of the great scnn
however ought ITO induce MI o ob@rvet their methods and emulate their
spirit Where in the writings of Darwin, Spencer Or Tyndan do any of these
eminent men tell anybody to formulate his theory before he collects his facts and
suppress such facts a he may have when they conflict with the theory, as the
writer Has the Senate Degenerated evidently must have done? Ascompared
forty or fifty years ago the senate probably has degenerated in certain re-
but not to anything like the extent which Informed and sunerc;ious
writers assume st Louis Globe Democrat