Year: 1870




Radical Journal.


Geo. Alfred Townsend, correspondent
of the Chicago Tribune, the leading
Radical journal of the West, writes from
Washington, as follows: -


The Republican party will undoubtedly
have as much as it can do to keep its ma
jority in the House of Representatives.
1t viii lose seats in New York, and, l sus-
pect, in every Southern State, and will be
hard pushed in Connecticut, New Jersey,
Ohio, Missouri, and parts of Pennsylva-
MIA By the Executive Government and
the Senate, it will be able to hold the
leading strings of power for at least three
years more, but the experience of the
past is that the Senate is a ductile and
malleable body, seldom leaning far from
the true sentiments of the Lower House,
and if you ever find the House to pass an
important bill and the Senate to non-con-
cur, you may generally conclude that the
House, having the fear of the people
before It's eyes, legislated hypocr1tically
and afterward went up to the Senate
and begged nOn-concurrence This was
the case with the repeal of the franking'
privilege, and even with the Houses i'm
peachment of President johnson. The
unchanging Senate, therefore, is, by the
conditions of itself, thing of change,
rejecting the wishes of the lower House,
as the mirror of Athene showed persons
the face of the Gorgon. Let the Senate
stand in the way of a determined Con-
gress and the noises of the people will
terrify it as Wellington and his peers
grew pale before the roar of the reform
party. With the Senate against Andrew
Jackson, it was never able to do more
than to irritate him by rejecting few of
his appointments. The history of Sen
ate against the President is that it be-
comes corrupted by his patronage, and
of a Senate against the House, that it
yields to intimidation and the will of the
country. Nevertheless, on grave occa-
sions, it is the citadel of the State against
all. -......


say, therefore, that the change of the
Lower House is equivalent to a general
change of polity and expenditure, and
yet, singular as it may appear, q change
of majority in the House of Representa-
tiyes at present might be substantially
Republican victory. Much of the present
Congress is only Republican in name and
organization. The purposes for which
the party was organized, and the spirit
which animated it, are retained by a
minority of the Republicans in Congress
only. The Republican party was the
party of free homesteads, but this Con-
gress has swept down the homestead sys-
TEN and substituted the land-monopoly
system. The Republican party was the
party of no section, but of national free
dom this Congress considers Pennsylva-
MIA to be the Union, and insulation to be
enlightenment. The Republican party
was the party of all, and an equal chance
for them all but this Congress has repre-
sented few, and they not those whose
daily cry is, "What shall we eat, and
what shall we drink, and wherewithal
shall we be clothed2" The Republican
party set up a new man as the type of
the State and asked that he be unre-
strained in his industries, adventures and
enterprises, and be left free to establish
conCederacies of freemen like himself in
his own way; the majority of Congress
would create 4 State modelled upon its
own pet theories and private interests and
compel the man to inhabit and conform
to it. This is the Republicanism of a
majority of Congress, set of inventive
bureaucrats and a ''mice" in every drawer
of the bureau. Let these take their in
volved piece of cabinet ware, which they
have named the New Nation, and preach
upon it for text. The Republicans of the
West have been true to their first concep-
ton. The members from the State of
Illinois have in general voted solidly and
intellIgently for the free State with a man
in it, and there is scarcely one of them
who, according to his degree of power and
light, has not distinguished his day
and generation. The Republicans of
the State of Missouri and Iowa have,
in general, been equally true to the origin
of their party, and Ohio and Indiana have
furnished several consistent examplars of
the spirit of SO. In Wisconsin and Mich
igan the old mastadons of Whiggery have
risen up and sought in vain to realize the
time and the cline, but the effort has
generally been too much for their Yegeta-
rian stomachs. In those States the Re-
publican party is in clear majority, but
the Republican party has been betrayed
in Congress. Those men who have sold
or misinterpreted the manhood of the
West are now to come face to face with
their constituents, and it is no funeral of
the Republican party if they be elected to
stay at home. Let these questions be put
to them: sH


1. How many bills have you favored
to take our homesteads and give them to
railways9


2. What protection can you give to a
man on the open prairie, menaced all
around by combinations of Indians, capt