Year: 1874

House OF Representatives yesterday ~ ~
reasonably certain that the House will to-day
take up and pass the Senate bill tor the lntia-
ton of the currency As will be seen by our
reports, the infiationists have compact ma
iority in hand, their strength having been
shown in the proposition to postpone the con-
sidention OF the Hous. bill from the Commit
tee on Banking and Currency. This majority
is worthy attentive study on the part OF
all who wish to understand the drift
of popular thought aud the centres of
popular ignorance or of popular Indifference
to the general welfare. 1t is faithful rehec-
tion of the vote in the Senate in its sectional
character, as well as with regard to the prac-
tical obliteration on an absorbing question Of
all the old party lines. Here we see plainly
before us the issue of the future. No demon
stration could make more positive and distinct
the line on the respective sides of which the
people are to be arrayed in new parties. DEM
ocrats, republicans Iberals-all these as
points of difference are forgotten or merged in
the new difference of inhationists or anti
/ int1ationists.


Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama-the
whole list, in short, OF the Southern States
and the Western States-are in the House. as
they were in the Senate, the strongholds of
the cheat, sustained by some scattering votes
of dupes or trlcksters in the East.


Nineteen Southern Senators, it will be re-
membered, are recorded in the vote in favor
of initiation. and we have intimated that as
this vote strikes at the credit and honor Of the
United States and the national government
these nineteen voices might possibly indicate
a little of the Confederate leaven, turning
up, as such things WILL in a most un-
expected place. 1t has been answered that
this is an unjust view-frst, because many Of
the Southern Senators are carpet-baggers, and
do not represent the South, while those who
are really representative Of the Southern
States-who are Southern men, and demo-
Gratis even-have voted tor imitation sin the
most profound ignorance and misapprehen-
SION of the effect of their votes. This an
swer seems to us insufficient, not to say lame,
and to be the result of some anxiety lest, if
Southern and Confederate opinion be found
on the wrong side in the present formation Of





for oil the advantages of republican collapse.
If such be, as it seems, the though. behind
the attempt to explain the Southern vote, it
indicates a short-sighted and mistaken policy.
Democracy will still be q dead name in the
country if its organs feel called upon to
defend Southern conduct right or wrong. Ii
democracy is to rear its head with any
1~a
Q platform of old issues. 1t must
stand on the platform already indi-
Gated in New Hampshire and Connecticut
a platform OF opposition to republicanism
and of rescue for the people from all the
denominations involved in republican rule,
whatever may be the politics Individually of
some persons who have helped to give effect
to that rule. If it pretends any ether possi-
bility it will force the people to choose sim
ply between what they know to be bad and
what they may reasonably fear will be worse.


There are, we believe, ten Southern Sem
ators who are natives of Northern States, and
the larger number of these are mere political
adventurers, who plunged into Southern
politics when they saw that the jugglery of
reconstruction would afford prizes for men
utterly unembarrassed with pride or principles
They went into that arena as thimbleriggers
| go to the races-resolved to use their wits and
accommodate themselves to circumstances
and as the politics of reconstruction only re-
quired a sufficiently loud declaration of loyalty
and very supple knees in the presence Of party
magnates-the circumstances were such as
they were fully equal to, and they throve ac-
cordingly. But not all the Southern Senators
of Northern birth are of this Glass; for Mr..
Goldthwaite, of Alabama, who is a native Of
Massachusetts,, is, of course, not carpet-bag-
ger, but man whose life and interests are
evidently honorably identified with the State
he represents. At least eleven OF the
Southern Senators who voted for in
fation are Southern men by birth
and identified in fortune and interest with
the Southern people, and several of these were
elected to the Senate as democrats. Is there
any significance in the fact that on an occa-
sion of momentous importance to the country
these men, whose political convictions we
might respect, are found side by side with
the political sharpers who have made
the South their prey, and with regard
to whom we might suppose the Southern men
to be in instructive opposition? What is the
secret of such an association? By what
imperceptible coercion have SO many
differences been overcome as one might
suppose would divide not only the democrat
from the republican but the Southern man
from the carpet-bagger and the legitimate rep
resentative of community from the political
adventurer who has been foisted upon peo-
pie in an immoral and outrageous traffic in
the rights that were denied to communities
by party votes in Congress only that they
might be sold to the same communities by
party leaders out Of Congress at stipulated