Year: 1878

The grave entreaty to Mr.. Tilden to
'"speak out" and declare that he does not
approve any assault upon the Presidents
title is exceedingly comic. The same
entreaty to speak out was used during
the doubtful winter that followed the
election, and when his party was very
much more united than it is now. Mr..
Tilden, however, is not a politician who
speaks out. He was chairman of the
Democrotic State Committee when Tweed
"ran" the Demcratic party of this State,
and Mr.. Tilden used to open the Demo-
cratic Conventions with a speech. But
he did not speak out. He is generally
supposed to prefer the ''still hunt in
politics, and still hunters are not much
given to loud talking. The one thing
that under no circumstances in the pres
ent situation will Mr.. Tilden do IS to
speak out. From the moment of the de-
cision of the Electoral Commission and
of Congress that Mr.. Hayes was Presi-
dent he has apparently had but one pur-
pose. 1t is to keep fresh and warm the
cry of Fraud. He has posed as the VIC
tim of "The Crime of the Century,"
Not, indeed, as personal victim, so as
to speak, for he has not failed to declare
that it is not he who has suffered, but
the country which has been defrauded in
his person. And he has done this that
the "Great Wrong" might be righted by
his nomination and election to the Pres
idency in 1880, not in any manner for
his own sake, but solely for truth, JUS
tice, and the country.


Now nothing is palmer than that the
Potter inquiry is a vigorous stirring up
of the fire. The uncertainty of its aim
and scope, the excitement and possible
disturbance, all increase the heat. But
to ask Mr.. Tilden to speak out is to ask
him to allay public interest in the "Great
Question of Fraud" And is still hun
ter, whose sole purpose is to keep that
fire burning and blazing, likely to obey?
He has always meant that .Fraud"
should be the Democratic platform of
1880. He is an old Tammany politi-
clan, as Tammany has just assured US
and his plan evidently is to insist,
through his friends, that he was undoubt-
edly elected in 1876; that he was de-
frauded of his Office by conspiracy
that he did not countenance any violence;
that, under his lead, the Democratic par
ty sublimely acquiesced in the diversion
OF the Presidency to party which had
not won it, trusting in the peaceful and
legal righting of the Wrong at the
ballot-box and how shall this be done
except with him as candidate?


This is apparently Mr.. Tilden's gener-
al plan. 1t will be said, of course, that
he did not .speak OUT against violence,
and that his most fanatical supporters
were the anarchists in the House, who
would have gladly broken up the count,
and that if the party acquiesced, it was
not because of any advice from him, and
that therefore the party is at full liberty
to seek candidate elsewhere. But we
suppose his secret reliance against this
view, which is, however, indisputable, to
be his conviction that the real cry of his
party in the election must be "Fraud,"
and that of that cry he must necessarily
be the representative. The Potter in
vestiganion, as Sam Weller said in the
famous sliding scene, 'skeep the pot
a-bilin," and Mr.. Tilden is not the man
to lift the cover.-Harper's Weekly.