Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1881 — New York and the Administration. [ARTICLE]

New York and the Administration.

Whether or not the relations between the administration and New York will appear as a political influence in Ohio — and how Republican skill or Democratic silence can keep them out it is impossible to see—those relations will inevitably become a political factor in New York. Some of the reasons which will make the relations of New York to the administration imperious in the Novemlier election in that State will also be potent in the other States, and specially in Ohio. This cannot be prevented either by political ingenuity on the one hand — which the Republican managers will certainly exercise, or, on the other hand, by the proper desire of the Democrats of Ohio to make their State contest in fact what it is in name, a State election, a local election. The administration is deeply interested in tlie Senatorial contest pending in New York. It has given to the enemies of Grant, and to the enemies of Conkling, and to the enemies of the influences which elected Garfield, the control, practically, of all of the Federal patronage to break down Mr. Conkling. Mr. Robertson, appointed Collector at New York, is one of the most powerful men in the Government in respect of patronage. He represents nearly the entire power of the administration in respect of the bribery of patronage in the greatest of States. Though long since appointed and confirmed as Collector, he still remains in the Legislature of the State to exercise over the Legislature the tremendous power of bribery at his command, and to intimidate the Legisla ture of New York at the bidding and in the interest of the administration, and the famous and infamous Marshal tyrant of New York appears with Federal appointments in his right hand to use as bribes—for what purpose ? Not to accomplish a great, patriotic purpose, but to break down the United States Senator who has been most useful of all in recent years to the Republican party. Mr. Conkling could have defeated the inauguration of Mr. Hayes, and was almost on the point of doing it His silence prevented the inauguration of Mr. Tilden, the elected candidate. Without Mr. Conkling, Gen. Garfield could not have been elected President. New York, the chief of the States, could not have been induced to vote for Garfield had not Grant and Conkling pounded the drum. Those thirty-five electoral votes were absolutely necessary to Garfield’s election, and, though Garfield was nominated by an accident, by treachery —of which Robertson is but one of the representatives—there are many Republicans in the land, many in Ohio, who will not believe that such treachery should be ostentatiously rewarded by the whole Federal Government, by the notorious distribution for that purpose of the most potent of known bribes, the bribes that are daily and lasting in their operation —the offices. When this is done by an administration that takes the people of the United States into its confidence, when it kisses its family, immediately after having made, in the presence of the country, the most solemn protestations in favor of civil-service reform, hypocrisy is added to political ignominy aiid political suicide. The relations of the administration to the State of New York are, therefore, of interest, and will command notice in all of the States, Ohio not least among them. There is another aspect in which the New York contest will be viewed by the thoughtful politicians of the Republican party. The Republican organization had already driven out of its ranks all of its great men of sentiment; it now proposes to drive away its greatest man of spoils. Its sentiment gone, its spoils system broken up, demoralized, at logger heads—what is left of it? The Trumbulls abandoned the Republican party. The Chases left it. The Julians deserted it. The Sumners denounced its later methods. The Coopers divorced themselves from it. The Greeleys turned their faces from it. The Sewards died feeling that they had seen the youth, the glory, the decay of the Republican party. The men who sat by its cradle really followed its hearse. And now, under the new, decaying, destroying school of Republicanism, the school of spoils, a spoils administration has succeeded in driving away its greatest and most honest commander in that school. The apparent censure of a State upon an United States Senator, we may remember in the meantime, is not final with the people of that State. Charles Sumner was censured by the Legislature of Massachusetts, and the censure was not revoked till Mr. Sumner lay on his deathbed. What is left of the Republican party when all of the strong men of sentiment, to whose names the suspicion of corruption was never attached, and the men representative of the spoils system, who have never been charged with having stolen a dollar, are driven out of it ?— Cincinnati Enquirer.