Year: 1876

yesterday with throngs of eager. listeners,
assembled to hear Mr.. Blaine. EAmerited
compliment to his skill as a debates was not
richly rewarded on this occasion. There
was nothing new in the matter of his speech.
and the mere interest of his manner could
not suffice to make it a great effort. Mr..
Blaine's peculiar strength lies in graphing
with immediate antagonists on the floor
OF the House and crumbling their
arguments by dexterous logic. But
on this occasion his speech had no rela-
ton to the pending bill, and lacked the
raciness and enlivening personal hits with
I which he enchains attention in the exchange
! of thrusts in a real debate The business
before the House was the Diplomatic and
Consular Appropriation bill, and Mr.. Blaine
devoted his speech to the utterly irrelevant
question of the currency He accordingly
lost the advantage of the sharp thrusts and
sldlful parrying in which he excels He
delivered a commonplace speech, written
out, put in type and sent 20 the press of dis
tant cities in advance, and having no refer
ence to the question under discussion.


This laborous speech does not contain,
from beginning to end, new idea nor
hardly an original illustration. AS a contri-
button toward solving the problem of specie
payments it has not the slightest value, be-
ing a mere reproduction of the trite argu-
ments for resumption without pointing out
any method Why should Mr.. Blaine have
injected a speech on this subject into a de-
bate with which it had no connection, when
he had nothing to say which has not
! been repeatedly said before? Ii was for
! the same reason that induced Governor
| Tilden, with equal irrelevance, to devote
half of his annual Message to our State
Legislature to the same question. Mr.. Blaine
lis trying to make such a record rs he thinks
will improve his chances for the Cincinnati
nomination. 1t is unfortunate for him that
he is under the necessity of beginning his
hard money record at this late day. and that
the urgency is SO great that he could not
wait until the subject should come up for
consideration in the House in the regular
order of business.


Mr. Blaine's perception of the exigencies
of his Presidential canvass seems to have
been surprisingly quickened by the recent
| vigorous movement of the friends of Senator
Conlling No public man has better
record on the currency question than the
republican Senator from New York. When
/ the Legal Tender act was proposed, in 1862,
! Mr. Conkling, then a member of the House,
strongly opposed it as inexpedient in policy
and repugnant to the constitution. His
record on that occasion shows that he is a
''dyed-in-the-w hard money man. When
the Legal Tender act had passed he acqui-
esced, like true patriot who was unwilling
TO embarrass or weaken the government in a
| great crisis by factious opposition to policy
it had deliberately adopted against his judg
ment There is no evidence that Mr.. Conk-
ling ever changed his opinion on this sub
ject Certain it is that whenever the ques-
tion of retracing the false steps and return
ingto specie payments has come up in Con-
gress Mr. Conkling has been foremost
among the champions of a sound currency.
In the protracted currency debates of 1874
his speeches, his votes, his zeal, his vigi-
lance were untailingly on the right
side against the imitation heresies of
Morton, Logan and Ferry. Now it
is certain that the Cincinnati Convention
will adopt a strong hard money platform,
and if that is to be the main issue against the
democratic party, there is no candidate
with the single exception Of Mr.. Bristow)
who approaches Senator Conkling as q con-
sistent representative of hard money princi-
pies. The recent activity of Mr.. Conklings
/ cr,n L. 81 L. o1a IL
Speaker, who is conscious of his inferiority
as a representative of Eastern financial opin-
ion. He made his irrelevant speech yester-
day from sheer jealousy of his New York
rival, who bids fair to start in the Cincn-
natl Convention with the seventy votes of
his own State against the fourteen votes of
Maine for the New England candidate.


II Was there ever so active and ridiculous
political mocing bird as Mr.. Blaine2 He
has no distinctive song of his own, but he
will promptly sing you the notes of every
other songster in the Presidential forest.
When President Grant went West last fall
and made the longest speech Of his life,
putting forth the school question as an issue
in national politics, the vocal songster in
the pine forests OF Maine immediately
poured the same notes from his swelling
throat, with perfection which would have
gained him the credit of being the author of
that exhilarating burst of Presidential
melody if he had been first in the
order Of time. When another of his
rivals, Mr. Morton, founded his canvass
in raven croaks against the South,
our accomplished political mocking bird
made it evident to all ears that he could
croak with equal skill And now, when,
contrary to his expectations, he finds that he
has an energetic rival in the East whose
silvery notes resemble the tinkling of the
precious metals, these also are promptly
Il. A