Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1881 — LETTER FROM WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

LETTER FROM WASHINGTON.

Correspondence of the Sentinel.’ Wabhimston, Dec. 23,1881. My pen has been long idle in your service, because, with the telegraph plying its vocation to the uttermost oarta of the earth, and the daily press oatebing up and forestalling everything that would otherwise be fresh and new to a weekly journal, it seems a kind of supernumerary labor to in dite a letter that at the best may contain iterated and reiterated news befoi© it can see tee light in your columns. Nevertheless I venture once more to tread this overworked field. , Did you ever know an administra tion which went straightforward to its ends and aims more direct than the one now executing the powers of the government as the “fruit of assassination ?” Pres’t Arthur moves slowly but steadily to the goal he is aiming for. tne rehabilitation of the Heal wart, or dirty end of the republican wasp, in the ascendancy.; And had ever another man a larger opportunity, or greater temptation to get back upon tae men who humiliated him? How admirab y he has kept his own counsels, and how uni forrnly, in his weeding out process, do the Garfield plants bow to his inexorable axe, and submit to be thrown over the fence of the republican garden amoDg the refuse, as the despised and rejected of the aspirants to imperial methods. And it must be admitted that the President is emoloyirg agents of larger mental calibre, as a rule, than his immediate predecessor, while making sure of the Stal wart status of those he selects to do the work. How short lived was the reign of liberal or independent re publicanism, so-called, and how hu miliated now. One by one the old regime are coming to the front, and die half-breeds” are already licking the hand that smites them—the hand which but yesterday they paused not to 3purn and turn from with contempt and;ioathing. O tempora! O mokes! How long will this calm last be tween the factions of the repulican party? Until the official spoils are dispensed. There’s no such sedative to republican heat and passion as the hope that some of the substantials will fall in their way. When Jhe places are all filled, and the last crumb from the government table given out then the howl may begin, if the halfbreeds are not already crushed beyond the possibility of a besubgam.— I have no more sympathy for the half breeds than confidence in the stalwarts. Why should I, or anybody who has at all made himself familiar with tne equally tortuous history of both ? The Indecent haste, and without provocation, with which the de capitation of special stalwart heads was undertaken under the brief Garfield reign justifies the “retort «ouiteous,” and betrayed a weakness that would have marked the whole term if there bad been no Guiteau. It is no disrespect to the memory of the late President, who was all that|is claimed for him socially and mentally and all that, to say that his election to the Presidency was a sad misfortune to him and his friends. JJe was not fitted for executive place, and in it he would have been but the football of the cunning and maladroit chief of his staff. All this is fully exemplified in his public career, in which be was constantly looking or talking oneway and rowing another, “is speeches and votes rarely con sieted. It was in debate as in sooial life he excelled, but he seldom had the courage of his expressed convictions; and when It was possible took an indirect route te reach his desti nation. Arthur is just the reverse, and those who “stand and wait” with a hope that he will let up or relent towards his old enemies will not be kept long in suspense, ir indeed any such remaio. I*® believes in Grant and Cockling; tneir methods and ways and his are in entire aooord, and he will dally only so long as his and their convenience and the proprieties of the peculiar agency may seem to demand before taking definitive action. This is already so unmistakeably foreshadowed the wonder is that anvbody can see him otherwise. will te President in all that term implies. “e will invite and take counsel, but not with or from your Shermans and Fosters, and men of their ilk. I think I must quit here. Some that I have written may grate harsh ly on unreflecting minds, and it will be said, probably, that your corree£ondent shows exceedingly bad taste x bis comparison of the dead with

the living. It will not be said that my diagnosis is wrong—at least by any one* 4 fully Informed and intelligent enough to comprehend. “•