Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1876 — The Forty-Fourth Congress. [ARTICLE]

The Forty-Fourth Congress.

Nine months of apology for secession, treason and rebellion; mne months of truckling subserviency to the representatives of the section which lately sought to destroy the Government with the sword; nine months of defense of the bloody horrors and brutalities of Andersonville, Libby and Belle Isle: nine months of effort to make familiar to the public mind the proposition to pay rebel claims, by their presentation in the form of “ bills;” nine months of slanderous accusation against the Republican party; nine months of inefficiency, incompetency and imbecility; nine months of animosity, bitterness and hate; nine months of failure. This is the record of the Con-federate-Democratic House of Representatives. Its instincts were all bad, its methods Jesuitical, its acts prompted not by love of country, but by consuming hate of a party whose chief pride is that it saved the countiy; and saved it, too, from the machinations and the bloody purposes of the very men who now propose to reform the administration of its Government! Strange reform, indeed, f that commences by the official decapitation of maimed Union soldiers to give Sdace to traitors who fought against them, oot to foot, with the deadly purpose of destroying the National Constitution, and trampling the National dag in the dust! Strange reform that palliates in the halls of Congress the inhumanities of the

prison pens of the late Confederacy! Strange reform that inaugurates lt--self by offering to plunder the Treasury of the Nation for the benefit of those who defied, and sought, by all . the arts of diplomacy and war, to subvert . the Government ana destroy the Nation! . But these were the methods of the House of Representatives, which reached adjournment on Tuesday last, after nine months of profitless investigation, of supreme hate and of matchless incompetency. The House did not legislate at all. * We defy its apologists to a single act of conspicuous importance passed; nay, . more, wc defy them to point to a proposition on the part of the Confederate majority in the House, made with serious latent and debated with honest candor, looking to practical reform. From the day of assembling to that of adjournment, the sessions of the House disclosed but one Intent on the part of the dominant party therein—the intent to traduce and villify those public men who were most conspicuous in military and civil life during the late war on the side of the Constitution and the Union. And we submit that this intent, unmistakably displayed, is evidence of bad faith on the part of the Democratic party, evidence that the members of it who held seals in the House of Representatives swear to support the Con-r-aakution 'with their lips while their hearts ■elect the oath. But this base intent resulted in next to nothing. Only Belknap —aoly one conviction in thirty investigatoons' ne say conviction, using the word mite moral sense. Belknap stands convicted before the public of having prostituted his high office to the basest of uses, and had not the incompetencv of a Democratic House desenerai P into absflJute imbacility, Siknap would have suffered conviction under impeachment. It is well known that the Democratic committee prosecuting the in.vestigation caused Belknap to be informed •d£ the testimony against him, and ao ofhim an opportunity to resign and -escape. Thus the most noted of the m- - vosfigations has, and will forever carry, -about St the odor of a corrupt bargain tween the committee having it in charge • and.the guilty subject of it. The investitnation of Robeson was at every step and stage ok it unmatched in infamy. Prose•cnte&witk closed doors, it had the air of -Oft inquisition so convict regardless of facte. The garbled extracts from the testimony given to the public tended to creJ*®* “eotiment, prejudicial to the -Official under investigation, while the re■ftnalj tiatii -compelled by indignant pro-

tests, to listen to the defendant, forces the conclusion that the comnsittee intended to condemn without sufficient evidence. The

trick by which it wss sought finally to prefer articles of impeachment, and at the same time prmoent an immediate trial, was worthy only of a mob intent upon the execution of a decree of lynch law. It is not necessary here to review the Investigation of ex-Bpeaker Blaine. It should be borne in mind, however, that that investigation was not commenced until Mr. Blaine hat! drawn the ex-rebcls on tito floor of the House into a trap, where they exposed their. warm affection for the late Confederacy and Uteir internal hate of the Union, and of all who defended it in the great contest for the preservation of Uie National existence. After that they pursued the great commoner with the fury of bloodhounds. But this hate of Blaine was merely hate of the Union and of the Constitution of which he had shown himself an able champion. It was an ebullition of ill-temper and bad blood, which disclosed slumltcring in the hearts of cx-Confedcrate members of Abe House the same disloyalty that once before m»dc rebels and traitors of them. And this is the secret of the utter failure of the lower House of Congress to inaugurate a single measure of reform during its late session. The South has not repented; it docs not realize that it has sinned. Hence it sends to Congress men who are disposed to seek old ends by new means. In a word, the Sjulli, though whipped, is not subdued to a condition of loyalty. Smarting under the chagrin of deteat and humiliation, the remnants of the old slave oligarchy propose to control the Union which they could not destroy; propose to capture the country and compel the taxpayers, North and South, East and West, to pay the cost of the rebel war and the cost of the emancipated slaves. It is a significant fact that no effort was made by the House of Representatives to reduce taxation; but a frantic effort was made to cut down appropriations. Waa it intended to provide a surplus with which to pay the forty million* of doUart of rebel claims now filling the pigeon-holes of the House ? It looks like it, and the country may well watch with anxiety the developments of the future, and the second session of the Forty-fourth Congress.— lnter-Ocean.