Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1882 — The Faction Fight. [ARTICLE]

The Faction Fight.

The condition of the Republican party to-day is one of the most remarkable spectacles in the history of politics. That of the Democratic party in 1860, preceding the great catastrophe which swept it from power, is more nearly a parallel than any other; but it is not a complete one. The difference between the two wings of the Democracy at that time was a difference of political principle in relation to the extension of slavery ; while the present difference between the two wings of the Republican party relates only to the spoils of office and the ambitions of rival leaders. The Republican party has been in power so long that it has ceased to be Republican except in name. It has no longer any higher aspiration than to hold office and digest patronage ; no policy but that of centralization, with the natural incidents of jobbery and corruption upon a national scale. Its great leaders do not contend with one another over questions of economy or of constitutional construction. They are simply divided over the distribution of the common plunder. A great principle, one of the most sacred traditions of American liberty, was, it is true, involved in the struggle at Chicago; but it can scarcely be said to have been met by the overthrow of Grant. Opposition to a third term, pure and simple, had very little to do with the defeat of the Old Guard by the narrow majority arrayed against it after many days Of doubtful conflict. Even Mr. Blaine never committed himself unequivocally against the third term—never declared that he would vote against Grant if nominated. The result, so far as the Republican party was concerned, determined almost nothing as to the only principle or likeness of a principle that entered into the fight. The third-termers supported Garfield precisely as Garfield would have supported Grant had the latter been the nominee instead of the former. They waited, sulked, threatened; and then, seeing the Garfield managers in a sufficiently desperate state, they made their own terms, knd, throwing themselves into the contest at the critical moment, won it ostensibly for Garfield, really for Grant and themselves. The treaty of Mentor was a reality. It made a Republican victory possible after defeat had been confessed", and the stalwarts were justly incensed when every obligation arising out of the bargain was either ignored or trampled under the heels of the triumphant faction. Mr. Blaine had his day under Garfield, and was neither modest nor moderate in the use of his opportunity. Now the stalwarts have theirs. The exiles are recalled. The Old Guard has, by the fortune of war, risen from the sunken ditch and swept the field. Its chieftains are singled out for Executive favor to the exclusion of the half-breeds, who but the other day had them under foot. And if the history of Arthur’s few mouths in the White House were now to be written by the outlawed half-breed, he would simply borrow with a change of names the story of Garfield’s brief term as it was written by the exiled stalwart. Situations are precisely reversed, and the rancor of the half-breed is even worse than was that of the stalwart. The President having nominated for a high office that Republican who has done his party more distinguished and valuable services than any other living man, his action is greeted with a concerted howl of indignation by the halfbreed newspapers, and by a passionate and malignant assault in the Senate. It seems that nothing indicates so clearly the intensity of feeling between the factions as the unreasonable and ferocious denunciations of this appointment. Things must change greatly if the next Republican Convention be not even more inharmonious than the last one. —New York Sun.