The Nation 1869-06-17: Vol 8 Iss 207

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‘The Nation. VOL. VIIL—NO. 207. THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 1869. mre ‘Detgans PER ‘ti Twaivs Cents par Corr Tum WEEK......-- 22. e cere cece eeeeeee 465| Norns: Ca kisnai sce ndenpeasmmameasinis EpiroRIAL ARTICLES : ; lid Manufacture of “ Issues*’........ 468 *s History of European Morals.... 475 ™ Social Future as Foreshadowed Coleridge's Life of Keble............... 471 the French Elections............ 468 | Miss Martineau’ 8 Biographies.......... 479 Revroads in th in the Legislatures......... 469 470 CURRENT LITERATURE: WIRED. csc cc ccccccesscccvcccccccceee Hana. book, at ‘Coemin - speeai ousan es Thro e Rock: CORRESPONDENCE Mountains .......... - Sie 05 Huet , Letter from “A Svedieh REE Ua ve wapseksnes > o> 2000 471 | Books of the Week.................... 480 Terms :— Five Dollars per annum, in ad 2, Four Dollars. *,* Remit- tances at = risk of the subscriber, anless > made by draft, p Nee P. O. money ’ order, or each subscription is indicated the printed labu. A eT dal of pirat, fst parton ide adengy continuance. ADDRESS, PUBLISHER OF “THE NATION,” BOX 6732, NEW YORK. PuBLisHING Orricr, 3 PaRK PLacr. The Week. Tue reports that some of the Pennsylvanian politicians, including Mesers. Curtin, Cameron, and Forney, were going to get up an Alatama “issue” for use in the fall elections, which have been rife for a week or two, have as yet received no confirmation from any overt act of the suspected parties. If they seriously entertained the idea of dragging the Republican party into preparations for a foreign war, and there is little doubt they did, the reception the scheme has met with from the press has hardly been of a nature to encourage them. A foreign war, to keep a particular set of politicians on their feet, is a device a trifle too mediwval in its morality for the kind of people of whom the main body of the Re- publican party is composed. It was confidently expected that tiv first blast of the trumpet would be blown by Mr. Curtin, in reply to the addresses presented to him by his friends prior to his departure for his post at St. Petersburg; but he has delivered a pair of farewell speeches without the slightest allusion to foreign politics. This reti- cence is, we are sorry to say, ascribed by some of the Washington cor- respondents to an advisory note from Mr. Fish, requesting (in substance) the Minister to Russia to attend to his own business, and not embarrass the Minister to England in the conduct of important negotiations by denunciatory and warlike harangues. It would be unfair to abuse Mr. Curtin for speeches he never delivered ; but it is safe to say that, if he intended to beguile his journey to his post by public attacks on powers with which we are at peacc, it would have been very proper of Mr. Fish to impose silence on him. Whenever our diplomatic service is properly organized, a minister who takes the stump for war, or an- nounces his intention of doing so, after receiving his commission, will be promptly dismissed, as a person having too little sense and discre- tion for civilized diplomacy. European nations, with whom nearly all our diplomatic intercourse is conducted—and we may say the same thing of China und Japan—do not understand the total absence of any feeling of responsibility for what they say about foreign nations which many of our high functionaries display, and even affect. This is simply an illustration of their general backwardness; but then, as we have to dwell on the same planet with them, treat, fight, and trade with them, we ought to adapt our style of doing business to their feeble intelli- gence. A breach of propriety nearly as great as that which Mr. Curtin was accused of meditating was reported the other day about Consul Morse, of London. This gentleman was accused in the usual style, by the fe ec .. +7 7288401 The A = ==———S EE London correspondent of the New York Tribune, of “sympathizing ” with the Confederacy, or with Andrew Johnson, or the anti-impeachers, or with somebody or something of an objectionable nature, and was denounced in the columns of that paper accordingly. So Consul Morse goes hat in hand to the correspondent, explains himself and excuses himself, and finally makes it all right with that functionary, who ao- cordingly publishes an acquittal of the culprit, which we suppose few people, who did not laugh over it, read without blushing at the thought that any American official should be allowed to subject himself pub licly to such ridiculous humiliation without being promptly sent about his business by his superiors, The discipline of no service can be in a healthy condition in which officers stand in terror of any fluent young person sent out by “a great daily” to survey the earth for its columns. What this practice may iead to, if not promptly resisted both by the foreign agents of the Government and by the State Department, we have had a useful illustration of inthe McCracken case. The Department ought either to pay no attention to charges made by newspaper corre spondents, or other rovers, against consuls or ministers, or else make it a rule that they shall address their defence to the Secretary, and not to their accusers. We hope Mr. Fish has by this time given Consul Morse a piece of his mind on the subject. This sort of subservience ones begun, there will be no end to it; and our foreign representatives wil! pass all their time on their knees one day before the emissary of the Tom-tom, and the next before an emissary of the Hammer and Tongs ; and these personages, once made conscious of their power, are not the men to be sparing in the use of it. If political affairs were transacted in racwo, the St. Louis Republican might well enough wonder how cooler people than the Border State men could have tranquilly looked on for two or three years after the war, and seen without grief the proscriptive and violent course which the Unionists of Tennessee and Missouri, for instance, pursued towards the late rebels. But the Tennesseeans and Missourians are men of like passions with ourselves, and politics is a practical business, and things out of season to-day are in season to-morrow; and it was thinking of these facts that the Nation declined to condemn the Brownlow mea and the Fletcher men of °65, ‘66, and 67. A policy of lenity could then, we believe, have been as little borne by the one side as the other. We believe, for example, that within the last year or two Mr. B. F. Perry has learned some things that would help him materially to make a useful member of the Legislature in South Carolina, and we believe that it would have been all the better for South Carolina if he could have been kept in perfect quiet during all of 1864 and the succeeding three or four years. So far as our information extends, we have now, at last, a right to be glad that the disfranchising and disabling poiicy gives signs of coming to an end; probably it is now the mother of more evil than good. In Tennessee, the contest becomes more exciting, as the rival candidates are stumping the State together—shaking hands on the platform before each speech, and then in turn covering each other with mud of all description. Stokes does not yet adopt the doe trine of immediate enfranchisement for the disfranchised, but Senter has adopted it, and the reason seems a plain one. The singular report is current that Mr. Johnson and Mr. Brownlow have made a treaty, under which the ex-President is to go to the Senate, and Senter is to have Johnson's assistance in the gubernatorial fight. Anything in thie way is believable of either “the Parson” or “ Andy ;” their raving and cursing and calling names at each other was_never anything more than the familiar Southwestern walking round an antagonist and “ cussing” ation. AGT