Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1880 — POLITICAL NOTES. [ARTICLE]

POLITICAL NOTES.

If it be true, as various Republicn j journals have asserted, that the Secretary of the Treasury has sent a score of agents down South, at the expense of the Federal Government, to advance his Presidential aspirations, many curious persons would like to know what has become of the order issued by the President in 1877, which is in these words: “No officer should be required or permitted to take part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions or election campaigns. This rule is applicable to every department of the civil service.”

In 1843 Lord Brougham laid it down that “ the publicity with which every department of the American Government is administered makes peculation impossible. It is an offense which in such a country can have no existence.’’ “ These words,” says the January Quarterly Review, “ have a strange sound to ears accustomed to the disclosure of such scandals as disgraced the second Presidency of Gen. Grant.” Thebe are 107,931 persons in the employment of the Federal Government. Each individual member of this obedient army has an average of five persons dependent on him, and through him, on the Federal administration. We have here an army of 540,000 persons in the pay of the administration and working to perpetuate the party in power. That is a machine uliicheountsa free ballot as naught, and sweeps away opposition majorities with a stroke of the pen, and is ready to work out any fraud conceived by the Republican leaders. Ouk army is composed of 2,187 officers and 24,262 enlisted men. At West Point Academy there are twenty-four musicians, eight professors and 212 cadets. There are 388 retired officers. The active or combatant force of the army numbers 20,566 men, eleven Generals and 1,559 officers, or one officer for every fourteen men. It would appear that there is altogether too much officer in our army. Tecumseh Sherman wants more men and more officers. He would like 200,000 men, but he will die without being gratified. Sherman is more of a Mexican than Grant. He would “pronounce” for himself in a minute if he had 200,000 men under him. At present there is not war material enough in the Government’s hands to fully equip 50,000 men. If Maine had been a Southern State, says the Boston Rost, and the parts played by Chamberlain aud Blaine had been taken by ex Confederates or Democrats, in the time when the Republicans were in the majority in Congress, what a difference there would have been. Washington would have been stirred to its center; the lobbies of the hotels would have been crowded persecuted carpet-baggers, pale with fear over the prospective loss of public swag; each one would have an investigating committee busy at work inquiring into State, county and town elections; a band of statesmen would have gone to the State capital to give assurances that troops would be ready when ne;ded, and both houses of Congress would have rung with speeches on the revolutionary tendencies of the Democratic Southern States, and all to make party capital, for your first-class Republican politician cares nothing whatever for the peace and harmony of the country when his party ascendency is endangered.

A stanch Republican paper, in discussing the present aspect of public affairs, employs the following language : “ There is no denying the statement that the best thought of the country favors a stronger Government than the nation has yet enjoyed.” What is the meaning of “a stronger Government?” “A stronger Government,” says our contemporary, “than the nation has yet enjoyed.” Stronger than Washington’s. Stronger than John Adams’. Stronger than Thomas Jefferson’s. Stronger than James Madison’s. Stronger than James Monroe’s. Stronger than John Quincy Adams’. Stronger than Andrew Jackson’s. Stronger than Abraham Lincoln’s. A stronger Government does not mean merely a stronger administration of our present form of government. It cannot mean that. There would be no significance to the phrase if employed in that sense. It would be impossible that the Government could be administered more strongly than it was administered by the great first Presidents, who were among its original founders; more strongly than by that iron man, Andrew Jackson; more strongly than by Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery. No; those who speak of a stronger Government mean a different form of government, in which greater power is reposed in the Executive. They mean a monarchy, and they can have no other meaning. Born free, they would become comparative slaves 1 Such men have no fit place on American soil. Degenerate sons of worthier sires, they have not the manhood to stand erect, but would voluntarily bow their necks to the yoke and hail Grant as King! —New York Sun.

Of “Tara’s Halls,” of which Moore sang, nothing but the outline cf the walls remain. Tara, the traditional palace cf Irish Kings, is in Meath, eighteen miles from Dublin, and belongs now to Mr. Preston, whose uncle, a Union Peer, was created Lord Tara. Tara is on very high ground, two miles from Beliuter, the spendid seat 0- the Prestons,