Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1880 — POLITICAL GOSSIP. [ARTICLE]

POLITICAL GOSSIP.

If Mr. William H. English, of Indidiann, were Vice President-elect, would the Republicans in Congress be striving for the establishment of the theory that the Vice President, and the Vice President only, can ascertain and declare the result of the electoral vote ? First and last, Gen. Grant has drawn from the treasury of the United Sta tes as salary, in one position or another, half a million dollars. No complaint is made that he didn’t earn his pay, but a man who has had half a million ought hardly come back upon the treasury as a mendicant.

The President shouldn’t feel bad about Richard W. Thompson’s forgetfulness of the hostile attitude of the administration on the Do Lesseps scheme. Richard was lulled to forgetfulness by De Lesseps’ fixing his salary as President of the American branch of the Panama Canal Company at $‘25,000. Mr. Thompson, as a constitutional adviser of Mr. Hayes, has been receiving SB,OOO. Of all men, Hayes, who dearly loves a dollar, shouldn’t think harshly of Dick. A great outcry was made by the Republican organs when, the political complexion of the Senate having changed so that, for the first time in twenty years, the Democrats had the organization, they disturbed some of the ancient servants of the Senate who were Republicans, supplying their places with Democrats. This, they said, was an outrage; it was revolutionary, it was hoggish, it was unprecedented. The Republicans are about to take hold of both houses. Does any one, most of all an organ, doubt that the change will be sweeping and complete as to officers? The rural Ohioan sincerely and proudly believes in the superior fitness of the Buckeye for public station. One of them says : “My programme -would be to put Sherman in the Senate, Taft on the Supreme bench, Matthews in the Treasury Department, and to reserve Foster for Pendleton’s seat, and, if there is another place on the Supreme bench for an Ohio man, West would fill it admirably. ” The country has grown somewhat accustomed to this pretense, and is likely to hear more of it. What with the outgoing of Hayes, who will endeavor to make up lost time, and the incoming of Garfield, the Ohio man will loom apace. The Philadelphia Times thus concludes the recent correspondence between Conkling and Bayard : Conkling to Bayard—l hear that you called me a thief. Did you say so? Bayard to Conkling—l did not say that you were a thief. What I did say was that you assisted in the wrongful abstraction of money. Conkling to Bayard—l asked you if you called me a thief. Instead of a plain answer you introduce a new and irrelevant allegation. I demand to know if you called me a thief or not

Bayard to Conkting—l have already told you what I said. My authority will be found in the Congret-sional reports. If there was any mistake I shall be glad to be corrected. Conkting to the Press : Two months ago you Baid that Mr. Bayard had called me a thief. Thus far Mr. Bayard has not retracted the epithet which you said he used. T therefore call Mr. Bayard a liar, and my friends, Messrs. Arthur, Boutwcll and Davis, will assist me. The interesting correspondence is doubtless closed forever, as Mr. Conkling, following the method which, in common with young school-girls, he seems to think most effective, will resolve never to speak to that Delaware man again. The advocates of a nice, agreeable place on the retired list of the army for ex-President Grant, says the Chicago Timed, recall how Jackson retired from the Presidency poor in health and poor in pocket. “I returned home,” he writes to Mr. Trist, “with just S9O in money, having expended all my salary and most of the proceeds of my cotton crop; found everything out of repair, corn and everything else for the use of my farm to buy, having but one tract of land, beside my homestead, which I have sold, and which has enabled me to begin the year (1838) clear of debt; relying on our industry and economy to yield us a support, trusting to a kind Providence for good seasons and a ixrosperous crop. ” The illustration can lardly be said to make for Grant unless it can be shown that his successor in the White House—his personal friend, Mr. Van Buren—took the occasion of aix annual message to recommend that Congress take care of him, or that through his next friend he procured the introduction of a bill placing him on the retired list of the army. Gen. Jackson never permitted his friends to represent him as an object of charity. Shaken as he was in hie old age, he was a grim old soldier to the last, and would probably have regarded $7,000 a year, the income of Gen. Grant, as princely.

The petty partisanship of President Hayes in matters of official appointment has never been more conspicuously shown than in his retirement of Gen. Ord and his transfer of Schofield from West Point, to make room for O. O. Howard, of Freedman’s Bank infamy. No thoughtful army officer wanted Ord retired. He was doing excellent service on the Mexican border. Sherman begged for his retention. Gen. McDowell was an older and less active officer. If one general officer must go to make room for Miles, and thus remove him from the path of Hazen, why not retire McDowell, affording a meritorious Brigadier the chance of promotion? Why, but that Ord had sent a warmly congratulatory telegram to Gen. Hancock upon his nomination, and McDowell, on the contrary, neglected such duties as he had to perform, ostentatiously to make the long journey from San Francisco to New York to vote for Garfield. Schofield was removed because he was supposed to be hostile to the negro, and to supply his place Mr. Hayes selects—whom? The man who saw the negro defrauded of millions of dollars, the fruit of his saving and selfdenial, stood by placidly, and said nothing. The editor wrote “An evening with Saturn,” and it came out in the paper “An evening with Satan.” It was mighty rough, but the foreman said it was the work of the “devil.” Audit looked that way. A San Fbancisco merchant says that he picks up from six to a dozen bullets on liis flat roof every year, a striking illustration of the number of chance snots in the city,