Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1882 — The “ Courtesy of the Senate.” [ARTICLE]

The “ Courtesy of the Senate.”

“No matter whose suggestion it may have been, it was a shrewd movement upon the part of President Arthur to select for the Ijoston Oollectorship a worthy person against whom the Massa chusetts Senators had a harsh feeling, and against the prospect of whose appointment they had zealously protested. By this maneuver he has placed these Senators in a more embarrassing situation than Garfield placed the New York Senators who resigned because Robertson’s appointment would be confirmed, though excessively distasteful to them. The President thus effectually pricks the bubble of the Garfield-Conk-ling fight, and compels the omission of that episode from the rhetoric of future stump-oratory and organ editorials. Arthur was careful to make his position stronger than Garfield’s was. He did not remove Beard in the middle of his term and upset the diplomatic service abroad in order to make decent bestowal of him while he slapped the Senators of the State in the face with a conspicuous appointment conspicuously distasteful to them. Arthur is too shrewd to weaken his case that way. He waits until the duty of making an appointment in the Boston Custom House falls to him in the official course ; then makes selec tion without reference to the wishes of the Massachusetts Senators. He does not delude these Senators with false hopes. He simply exercises the Presidential prerogative, and for the maintenance of that prerogative, when Garfield was the executive and Conkling the victim, no Senators were so zealous as these Massachusetts statesmen. Then they denounced “the courtesy of the Senate,” which now they would fain in voke. The tables are completely turned upon them. Their ox is gored. And as they squirm in a trap of their own handiwork the executive has the soothing knowledge that he has used so much of Garfield’s tactics as were necessary to confound the Senatorial enemies of Conkling, and ’show the country how little of real merit there was in the administration’s tremendous battle over the New York Custom House. Arthur has given the finishing stroke to that elaborate humbug.— Chicago Times.