Year: 1873

The rejoicings with which the city of Wash
ington will rosound to-day will waken an echo
all over the United States. The people will be
glad, not only that the government OF the
nation passes again into the hands OF General
Grant for another four JeaEs, but also that the
curtain falls on the Credit Mobilier Congress
and on some at least of the men who have
figured in its disgraceful scenes. There is q
general hope that the present Inauguration of
the reelected President will mark the COM
mencement of new and better era in our
public affairs that with the close of his first
term of Office the President will shake from
him the advisers who have not added to the
honor and credit Of his past administration,
and will enter upon q more decided policy
than he has pursued since his Inauguration
four years ago. 1t is true that his success
has been the success of a party which
has lost public confidence with startling
rapidity since last November-a party whose
corruption has now become notorious; but as
General Grant carried the republicans to VIC
tory instead of owing his triumph to republi-
can strength, the people do not recognize him





of the whole nation. They have confidence,
therefore, that he will rise above faction in his
new career; that he will correct the errors
into which inexperience in public affairs and
the bad advice of unscrupulous men may have
led him. that he Will assert his independence
of all the cliques who have hitherto claimed
exclusive control over him, and that his am
bition will be to make such mark on the
pages of American history in his second and
last term Of Office as the Chief Magistrate of
the nation as will leave his fame equal only
to that Of Washington and Lincoln.


No public officer has ever enjoyed better
opportunity to win the laurels worn by the
command of General Grant The corruption
of official life which has become so offensive
to the nation and so threatening to the very
existence of republicanism lies at his mercy.
BY firm stand against those loose practices
which have unhappily become common in the
civil service of the country, he can purify the
public departments, and by asserting his in
dependence of Congress, he can prevent re-
currence of such disgraceful exposures as
those which have recently scandalized the ma
ton. The dishonest policy which prompted
the oppression Of the Southern States, which
handed their treasures over to the
greed of carpet-bag plunderers and placed
their local governments in the power of
depraved and ignorant negroes can be re-
versed at his will. By fair treatment of the
educated citizens Of the South; by respecting
the will Of the people of Louisiana and other
Southern States, instead of attempting to
thrust usurping governments upon them; by
removing from them the offensive and arbi-
trary bayonet law, the enforcement of which
is discretionary with him; by treating the
whole Southern population, white and black,
with equal consideration and fairness, the
President can restore order in that whole Sec
ton of the country, and can put stop to the
evils that have been done by the Warmoths
and the Kelloggs who have preyed upon the
South ever since the close of the rebellion
The weak and temporizing policy which has
marked our treatment of foreign questions,
and the experiments and vagaries of our fnan-
cial policy, can be changed at his bidding The
popular sentiment in the recent campaign
pointed unmistakably to a remodelling of the
Cabinet that should relieve us Of the present
Secretaries of State and of the Treasury, and
the people will trust to President Grant to
respect their wishes in this direction. The
Inauguration to-day may thus happily prove
the Inauguration of an era of reform in our
civil service and in Congress of peace and
xo~ kho
policy at home, and of frmness and dignity
in our relations with foreign nations. In this
hope the people of the whole Union will
rejoice with the gay crowds at the national
capital over the ceremonies that mark the
commencement of General Grants second
Presidential term.


Quite rs hearty and d,sncere will be the Joy
of the nation at the final close of the Forty
second Congress. The scenes which were en-
acted yesterday will be tolerated because they
are the last in which the Credit Mobiier op-
orators in their present combination can hope
to figure, and because they terminate the
career of some Of those who have been impli-
Gated in the offences condoned by their asso-
ciates in corruption. But what q record do
those scenes present The Senate could not
find time to expel the convicted corruptionist
and falsifer Patterson or to censure his
Credit Mobilier companions, but could
whitewash the pious briber Pomeroy
and protect Caldwell from the punishment he
merited. The House of Representatives re-
manned in session rushing through all
sorts of jobs, with Credit Mobilier Dawes
acting on appropriation committees that voted
away millions of the public moneys, and
Credit Mobilier Bingham giving the last
touches of the law to judicial questions. At
one moment Credit Mobilier Garfield appeared
on the floor, making q conference report on
the Legislative Executive and Judicial APP