Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1873 — Senator Wilson. [ARTICLE]

Senator Wilson.

HoN. Henry Wilson retires from his seat in the Senate to accept the position of Vice-President with a record untarnished. Commencing life in obscure poverty and working his way up through difficulties which were well calculated to develop the elements of true greatness, he has now reached one of the highest positions within the gift of the people. He has served Massachusetts long and well, and we do not wonder that they give him up to the people of the country with mingled feelings of pride and regret The Boston Journal, in an article called out by Mr. Wilson’s letter to the Governor of Massachusetts tendering his resignation as Senator, says: It. is not merely what Mr. Wilson has done for the State that we think of at this time, but what he has been. He leaves our service as poor In this world’s goods as when he entered it; and although it might not once have been a great tribute to a statesman to say that he was never implicated in a job and that not a penny of his country’s money had stuck to his fingers, it is now, unhappily, something worth saying. There is another evil more common, If more trivial, among our public men, which cannot be overlooked. There is a species of official arrogance, which is hard to define, but which we so often meet that every one knows what It is. The young politician, who is so friendly and affable to all, undergoes, with long continuance in office, a- sort of petrification. He seems to think that office has become his right, that even his constituents are made for mm rather than he for his constituents, and so he becomes distant, oracular and pompous. Nothing of the kind attaches to Mr. Wilson; he is as accessible, as ready to oblige, as free to converse with the humblest, as he ever was. He has never got abdve the common people. Hence he has been nearer right in his views and in his predictions than most statesmen, because he has constantly shared the intuitions of the masses. ’He had less need to study history, because he believed it; dr to reflect, on the public wants, because he felt them himself. That this training has made him in one sense a .politician as well as a statesman, is no discredit. It was skid of Sir Matthew Hale, when he was a lawyer, that he knew all the arts of his profession, but only to protect justice against them in thehanda of others; and Bo Mr. Wilson’s expenefleeiandaktW In political affairs have been used Only to foil demagogues, to detect

and defeat corrupt combinations; and of such men, whether we call them politicians or statesmen, may there never be a lack in the councils of this government. The augury on this score is good when we reflect on the circumstances of the choice of the Vice-President elect. Hawthorne, although he had no political sympathy with Abraham Lincoln, said he was satisfied that the people h»d again vindicated their instinct of selecting the right man for their President. We may say the same of the Vice-President now, when we consider the developments that have been made since Mr. Wilson was nominated and chosen, however alleviated those developments may be. The country, almost without distinction of party, is glad, and feels more secure, now that Henry Wilson stands next behind President Grant. In view of this great fact, Massachusetts accepts the surrender of the Senatorial trust now tendered her, with peculiar pride and a sense of honor which goes far to mitigate the regret she would otherwise feel. It i«, indeed, fortunate for the American people, and it seems also providential, that in the recent developments of stains upon the characters of our public men, the closest investigations have failed to cast even so much as the faintest suspicion upon the untarnished name of the Vice-President-elect. With what regrets the American people would have witnessed the inauguration of a VicePresident whose hands had been stained by Credit-Mobilier stock; and how rejoiced all must feel in knowing that the men whom they have chosen to stand at the helm of State for the next four years are above even the suspicion of corruption.— Toledo Blade.