Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1873 — The President and the Panic. [ARTICLE]

The President and the Panic.

Among the excellent executive qualities of the President there is one which has always most pleasantly impressed those who know him, and that is his tranquil firmness when his duty seems to him clear. Those who served nearest him in the field say, that in the wildest whirl of battle be was never known to lose his selfpossession, nor to swear. He has an admirable temperament for a President, especially at a time when every body in distress turns to the Government for help. This was strikingly illustrated during the lute panic, on the Sunday that he and the Secretary of the Treasury came to New York to consult with the bankers upon the situation. The excitement that morning at the Fifth Avenue Hotel was unprecedented. The corridors and parlors swarmed with a multitude of frenzied people, who supposed that incalculable disaster impended, and that the President had the power of staying it by a word, and of saving the country from financial, as he had already saved it from political, ruin. Among the crowd were many of the men who are famous as capitalists, and who are supposed to be masters of finance—a supposition not based in every inatance upon the most accurate knowledge. There was also in the throng a distinguished lawyer, of politics opposed to those of the President, Mr. Reverdy Johnson, whose advice and opinion were eagerly sought. It was a crowd of speculators and gamblers in railroad slocks, with some of those whom they had involved, all passionatelj’ desiring that the President would use the public money for their relief. The President asked for the law that would authorize him to touch it tor such a purpose.—The distinguished lawyer instantly conceded that there was no lawful authority’ to do it, but that the situation of the country was so threatening that the President ought to assume the power of dispensing With law, and trust to Congress to approve his course. Even the habeas corpus act, he said, is suspended in moments of extreme urgency, and is the Treasury reserve more sacred than personal liberty? If the distinguished lawyer said this to the President, the President probably replied that the habeas corpus is suspended under the express authority of the Constitution, and that while in the existing emergency he was anxious to do all that he possibly could under the law, he was unwilling at such a moment to put the law aside and establish a precedent of such momcntons consequences. But whatever he said, his decision was fixed from the first. He went to the verge of li is undoubted authority, but he refused to dispense with the law. It is another of the many proofs which the President has constantly .given of ’his sincere patriotism. He came to the Presidency a victorious soldier, peculiarly unfamiliar with civil administration, and taunted with maintaining headquarters at the White House. But. among all American Presidents there has been none more scrupulously loyal to law than General Grant. And never was that fidelity more desirable than during a Presidency immediately following a war, which always diminishes the sanctity of civil authority? Usurpationsand dispensations with the law might have been expected from a military President, and at a time when an abnormal situation would have seemed to justify them. But General Grant has shown no such disposition. He has not only not assumed extraordinary power, but he has sought to avoid even the opportunity of exercising lawful authority, as in the case of emergencies in the Southern States. If there has been fault, it is not his, but the law’s. Among the great services which General Grant has rendered to the country, not the least is the tranquil and modest firmness with which he has maintained the authority e bf law.— Harper's Weekly. A discovery has been made in the Paris Academy of Science that hydrogen, hitherto considered an element, is in reality a combination of two elements, one of which is nine times as light as hydrogen and twenty-five times as light as ordinary illuminating gas. The new element is called abaron, meaning weightless. It will not burn, ext inguishes flames, is without odor, taste, or coloy. The discoverer, is M. Lebarre, a wgjl knqjvn chemist, and his discovery was not an accident,-but the result of a series of successful experiments. .Oni.Y about 500 feet of the Hoosac ''Tunnel remains to be bored. The completion of the undertaking is promised •by November 15.