Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1871 — Popguns. [ARTICLE]

Popguns.

The character of many of the attack* upon the President is fatal to the cause ot those who make them. If the moat striking and continuous assaults are abetudpdly trivial, or plainly refhted by facts, thSinevitable inference is that there are few icrious grounds of complaint With the return of summer return the gibes at the desertion of duty implied in not remaining it the scat of government The country, however, will hardly grudge the President his residence by the sea daring the hot weather; nor will it curiously count the number of cigars he smokes, nor of lie drives that ho takes, as evidence of his ofllcial negligence. Tn fact, one of the most agreeable traits in the President is his contempt for all the cheap arts of popularity which are so sedulously cultivated by many small politicians in large offices. If it could be shown that he seriously neglected the duties of his office, there would would be just reason for dissatisfaction. But that is not attempted. The effort is not to tell the truth, but to create a prejudice. A ready humor can easily ridicule whatever it touches, and a daily sneer at any man or at any subject would not be without effect. But the most zealous student of the ridicule directed at the administration by its enemies could not avoid asking himself at last, “ If the administration be so insane and imbecile as these wits represent, how are such undeniable good results produced ?” Mr. Lincoln, according to the familiar stonr, inquired anxiously about the brand of whisky which it was alleged that General Grant drank, that he might send some to certain other generals. And if inanity and imbecility diminish the debt, reduce taxation, settle quarrels honorably, and maintain the national peace and honor upon all sides, would it not be well either to try more of the same, or to ascertain whether they are terms which accurately describe the facts! There is, however, one solemn charge .vhich we see renewed in some of the Democratic papers. “It would suit the desperate and unscrupulous men who hold executive positions, says a paper of the party which, in the same kind of rhetoric, used 10 call Mr. Lincoln a gorilla and a third-rate country lawyer, to “druy and benumb ” the country into the conviction “ that better a bad government than a change.” And it proceeds to declare what it is pleased to call its “ honest conviction” that Power (with a capital P) is industriously weaving filaments to “ bind a giant of stronger thews than ours in permanent subjection.” All this was much more directly and plainly said by General Frank Biair before the election of General Grant, when he told us that he would probably make himself emperor, and hold the White House against all comers. It is difficult not to call this kind of remark drivel. And when this is gravely urged in respectable papers as a reason for restoring the Democratic party to power, it is plain enough that on that day the writer had no argument whatever to present against the continued dominance of the Republican party. There have been several military Presidents: Generals Washington, Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, and now General Grant. The latter was elected, as it were, from the field, and with little comparative acquaintance with political parties and civilians; and he naturally kept immediately around hint certain officers whom he had professionally known and proved, for the same reason General Jackson brought with hinl to Washington as private secretary his relation Major Donelson, whose death was recently announced. But there never was a President, whether taken from military or civil life, who has shown more personal simplicity and total freedom from unworthy personal objects in his high office, or who has been more faithfully subject to the law. There has been no act and no word upon the part of the President that has in any degree justified the prophecy made by General Blair, and which has been recently elaborately repeated. And the assertion was first made by the candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and is now repeated by organs of tbs party, many of whose leaders would unquestionably have regarded with complacency a coup <T etat by General M’Clellaa, which was vaguely hinted, and which had only sweet words for those who would d stroy a free republic to found a slave empire. This is the kind of aspersion which shows that arguments have failed, and which is made ridiculous by the character and career of the President.— Horper’t Weekly.