WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1869. CAMPAIGN OF iB6O. Club Batcslof the Weekly Intelligencer. ■ $ 2 co o oo l7 oo 32 00 45 00 to one address. 60 CO •• “ 80 00 Slnglo Copies, One Year. Five “ “ Ten *• " Twenty " “ Thirty " Fifty Eighty " “ A Ben of Thieves. The final adjournment of our State Legislature is on event upon which the newspapers of the State of all political parties are congratulating the people. We breathe freer now, for we know the extent of the damage which has been done us and that no further injury can be inflicted for nine months to come.— Would that the Legislature did not meet again for nine years! for the In- stltution has got to be a common nuis * atice, which, if it continues to grow in intensity as it has been growing for the past few years, will effect the utter ruin of our country. The late Legislature has left behind it a record, compared with which the foul acts of its predecessors seem almost commendable. The acts which it pass ed and the still more atrocious laws which it essayed but failed to enact, / will brand it as infamous forever. The personnel of the body was such as to fill every one who saw it with horror, to think that such a set of men were the law-makers of the State.— Philadelphia had a villainous delega- tion in the body but there were plenty of country members who were equally vile. They looked like thieves, acted like thieves and were thieves. Thu rascality, we fire bound to say was not altogether confined to the lie* publican members who were in the ma* jorfly, and who will therefore be held responsible for the legislation. There was a small body of Democrats who wore in the Ring and who were up to their eyes throughout the session in every scheme of corruption that was broached. One or two of them were men whom we found it difficult to be lieve were so base. Wo regretted in particular to learn that one young man from a neighboring county, had dis graced an honored family name irfid sold himself for money. The conduct of other men did not surprise us. The Honorable Samuel Josephs, of Rhila- astonish anybody by any act of baseness. But the democ racy of his district are every bit as bad as ho is, for they know what he wanted to go to tiio Legislature for when they 'sent him, and they, every one of them, deserve six. months imprisonment at hard labor for voting for him. We un derstand thal'he is the paymaster re ferred to in the following editorial item from the Harrisburg Jhanbl: Wo are informed, upon good authority, that one of tin) paymasters of the “ ring ” publicly gave his cheeks, at tlio Holton House, on Friday evening last, to a num ber of members of the Legislature. Of course none of those wily witnessed this operation could swear in a Court of Justice that these chocks were given in puymeut lor voles in the Legislature. But all who saw the performance, unite in saying thut they lmve no doubt that such wus tlie case, How Hhumeful beyond expression thut such a thing can ho done in the broad light of day in this city of Harrisburg ! It is the duty of the gentlemen who saw this trans action to institute a legal investigation. What avails the denunciation of the news paper pros, if the people themselves are impervious to a just sense of the shame which their representatives are bringing upon thorn V There is a stringent statue for the punishment of bribery and corrup tion, Let it be enforced. There was another paymaster, we un derstand, sitting at the same time at another Hotel in-Harrisburg, drawing checks in-favor of .Republican Legisla tors. But as to him we feel leas in terest. it is nothing singular for .Republican politicians to be corrupt, and jtin; party seems to he able to endure it. Blit the Democracy cannot. We are the special champions of honesty ami integrity in the administration of the government, and we must not allow any one whom wc put in ollice to belie *>\tr principles by Am practice. Jtisour duty to denounce ami cast oir all such rotten members of our party, which at till hazards must be kept pure and with out reproach; for it is our mission to check the wide spread corruption which exists in all departments (if the gov ernment, and which, if it continues, will prove fatal to the life of the Re public. Ml lricnm[ni' Ineunipctrncy Previous to tlit* .Presidential election (Irani was represented by the Radicals as being a Conservative, as Ihb people's eamlidate, and not as a representative of any ultra faction. Since bis election, however, it seems that the great Hiram Ulysses is completely in the power of Sumner, Butler, and other New Eng land fanatics and demagogues. At tiie /nstunoe of such men—the vilest ami most unprincipled of the whole .Radi cal crew -Mr. pliant lias sent negroes to represent the United States at Jluyti aud Liberia as Ministers resident. To one of tin* most lucrative offices in .New Orleans lie appoints a negro. A North ern strong-minded women is selected lor the Post Ollicc u! Richmond. The notorious scoundrel ami corruptionist, Jim Ashley, who failed to ho re-elected to Congress, from the Toledo OongreH* slonul district in Ohio, is appointed Uovornor of Montana. The men who gavo him houses and lands ami cheeks for large sums of money occupy promi nent positions in his Cabinet. Impor tant public positions are tilled by his own and his wife’s incompetent and needy relatives—in short, (Irani's ap pointments alone indicate* bin: to be the most incompetent man ever ele vated to the exalted position of Presi dent of the United States. Tnr; New York World says “we have now the patriotic rule of number one. “ For thirty-five positions in the gift of Superintendent Rice, of the Treasury building, there were over three thousand applications.’’ Just patriots to a “ posish.” Aml all 1011. Because Commissioner ’Wells 7 Re port on the Revenue militated against the interests of the New England man ufacturers ami other capitalists, wiio glow rich oil the labor of the people, Congress, with characteristic meanness, refused to appropriate money to pay liis stipulated salary. Grant lias ordered the registration to he continued in T«.-xas, preparatory to a vote on the Constitution. That will add to the power of the whites, if they avuil themselves of it, and may re sult in a defeat of itadical candidate*. It is said the same order will he applied to Virginia and Mississippi. Tjik Imperialist still lives. The news ugentß refused to circulate its first issue, but its publishers claim that it has al ready a circulation of over Io.UCU. It is run in the interest of the bondholders, and impudently asserts that a complete triumph of the Democratic party would bo equivalent lo repudiation. Charles A. Dana, of the New York Aim, has been excoriating Grant severe ly of late. Notwithstanding his severe criticisms he has been appointed ap praiser of the port of New York. We are anxious to seo what effect this will have upon the columns of his, news paper. TiiE Imperialist., the paper published in New York advocating the establish ment of an .Umpire in this country, in dignantly denies the rumor ailoat that it ladead or about to collapse.' The Im pcrialist is right—as long as the Radi cal party ia in power and have the con trol of the Government they will not fail to aid the advocates of au empire in publishing their paper. THE WEEKCiY' A.PRIL 21, ±869 A Secret Friend. The best friend the Democratic party has just now Is President Grant. The beaten pariy is not . usually very san guine of its ability toisweep the country at the fall elections of the year succeed ing a Presidential contest, but then it is not be a Brigadier General, who left a sick bed to take part in the battle of Gettysburg, who marches! with Sher man from Atlanta to the Sea, aud who bears on his body many wounds which should have plead his course success fully, was summarily kicked out of ofllee to make room for a political mountebank who is making thousands of dollars every year out of contracts for public printing and other jobs which are freely given him by a corrupt Radi cal Legislature. A widow of another gallant soldier was au applicant for the olllce, and she was recommended by a majority of the Republicans of Hums burg, hut Simon Cameron insisted upon having his licU-spiltle appointed, and Grant turned out a soldier, turned his back on the-soldier’s widow, and com missioned Bergner. And now this political cormorant, who gobbles up such au immense amount of patronage, is making much ado about his having offered a clerkship to the soldier’s widow who was repudiated by Grant. The widow very properly de clined to be made an underliugof Berg ner. Iu so doing she showed that she was worthy to be the wife of a soldier, and incapable, of sullying the reputa tion of one who died for his country. We ought to beg pardon for coupling the name of Jackson with thatof Grant but we ask every soldier and citizen to contrast (he conduct of the two men. Jackson was a Democrat; Grant is Radical enough to suit even Wendell Phillips. Trouble About the Foreign Appointments. There is serious trouble about Grant's foreign appointments. Many of the nominees are considered to be unfit for the positions to which they have been assigned, and the whole batch have been hung up to await the result of a conference with Ulysses. Here is a hitch which may result in serious con sequences. The.virtuous Senate has, however, agreed to refer all revenue ap pointments to the Radical representa tives of different States with the under standing that there is to be no inter ference with local preferences. So we go. He Paster and Folder Swindle Finally Consummated. The Infamous scheme of enforcingthe payment of the, twenty-seven extra 'pasters and folders was finally consum mated by the passage of the appropria tion bill, .with a clause in It providing fbr paying them; It will be remem bered that the-'Senate refused to pass the appropriation bill with this clause in it. A committee of conference, con sisting of three members of each House, was then appointed. The members from the House refused to allow the clause providing for paying the extra officers to be stricken out, and the bill was finallyreported backasit originally passed the House. A vote was again had on it in the Senate, anditwasagain defeated. At the last moment, how ever, one Democrat was Induced to vote for it, and it only remained to secure another Republican. In this crisis Gen. J. W. Fisher changed his vote and the .bill passed with the clause providing for paying the extra pasters and folders. Gen.--Fisher is defended by Mr. George Connell, of Philadelphia, in the follow ing letter which we find in the Express.- Senate Chamber, 1 Harrisburg, April 15, 1869. J To the Editors of the Express: I think it due to your Senator, General Fisher, that I shotild state the circumstances under which he finally gave his support to the General Appropriation bill, passed this day. As Chairman of the Committee of Fi nance, haying charge of the bill in the Sen ate, I was naturally anxious that the bill should pass before the adjournment of the Legislature, in order that the necessity of an extra session of the Legislature might be avoided. The Committee on Finance had stricken out the item providing for the pay ment of the extra officers employed by the Honse, before the bill was considered; so that question was never discussed or voted upon in the Senate. When the Committee of Conference on the part of each House met for the adjustment of the differences between the two Houses, the three members of the House refused to concur in the amendment made by the Senate, and in sisted that the item paying their officers should be restored. The Senate Committee was forced to yield, or the bill would have fallen in Committee of Conference. General Fisher voted against adopting the report of the Committee because it sanc tioned the payment of the extra House of ficers, and thereby contributed to the defeat of the bill. The question coming up again, having been reconsidered to-day, General Fisher again voted no : and when all the Senators had voted, and it appearing that the vote of one Senator would change’thel result, Gen. Fisher yielding to the necessity, as the only means of preventing an extra session of the Legislature at a cost of perhaps a hun dred thousand dollars to tne State, arose and reluctantly changed bis vote. The pay of the extra officers of the House will be about §16,000, while the cost of an extra session would porhaps have reached §lOO,OOO. Relieving that Gen. Fisher did all that any man could to defeat the obnoxious pigment to the extra officers of the House, I think he did wisely in choosing the least of the two evils, and thereby saving the Commonwealth thousands of dollars.— Very truly yours, Geo. Connell. The editor of the Express is not atall disposed to accept the excuses made by Mr. Connell as valid, and he cuts up the Senator in the following savage article: General Finber Deserts. Mr. George Connell, n member of the State Senate from Philadelphia, and a gen tleman with whom wo never bad any ac quaintance or communication before, writes us a letter which will be found elsewhere in this paper, to explain and apologize for the course of Gen. Fisher in finally voting for the Appropriation bill, embracing the item for the payment of the pasters and folders unlawfully appointed by the House. Why and through whoso dictation or prompting this letter to us was written by . Mr. Connell, it is not difficult to penetrate ; ! but it is very certain that he fails to make j out a plausible excuse for the extraordinary , course of Gen. Fisher. Gen. Fisher, accord- ; ! Ing to his apologist, was strongly opposed to the bill and steadily voted against it un til he found that the final decision of the, question rested with him alone, when rather than put the State to the expense of an ex trn session, be changed his vote and went over to the other side ; and this short state ment embraces the whole sum aud sub stance of Mr. Conuell’s wordy letter, ex cept that he informs us that Gen. Fisher "reluctantly" changed his vote, an expres- , sion which simply shows that Mr. Connell, | lor the sake of getting his friend or ciieut , out of a scrape, is willing to testify to a ; correspondent of the New York Herald has had an interview with Senator Sprague, Md,&undfcim.?ery^noinmunicative. We •make,the fallowing extracts from his re portjof whafcKe saw and what was said: A mild mannered man is the Senator from Rhode Island.; not timid, not diffident in asserting his opinions, and ridiculously in different to the criticism of the whole world andthe world’s wife combined. He haa one of the elements of greatness—tenacity. Those who suppose he intends to snbside, Suit the busy stage and retire for ever from le living drama after startling his audi ence with one or two spoken pieces, are wo folly mistaken. He has but iairly com menced, as Samson, by a vigorous and per sistent application of an assinine jawbone to the heads of the Philistines, made ever lasting smash of that nnhappv community, so shall Sprague, (going forth on the war path with the club of truth in one hand and the State of Rhode Island in the other, spread terror among the tribes of money shysters and Shylocks. "I have been to New York,” observed the Senator, “to make arrangements for the printing of my speeches, I shall have sixty thousand copies printed, and if the people want more they shall haye them—a million for that matter must be printed. Ido not think my money could be better spent. It will go for the instruction and enlighten ment of my countrymen, who want both these things badly. A silent, sure and fear ful weight is crushing them to the earth and they do not know it, but they feel vaguely that their life blood is ebbing fast; that their substance is decaying, dying, melting away; but as long as I think I know the cause and the cure I am not going to sit down, fold my arms and let the country go to tbe devil. If I felt like acting such a coward’s part, I would much prefer leaving the country forever, and my means are ample enough to make life pleasant in whatever foreign land I might go to. Look here,” he exclaimed, pointing to a long row of bundles on the mantelpiece, " there are letters from every part of the nation, from men of all parties and all conditions, asking for copies of my late speeches. Just run your eye over one of these bundles,” he continued, handing us a lot embracing over one hundred and fifty letters received by tbe morning mail. We did so, and not without sincerely’be lieving, thatin|spite of ail that is said to‘the contrary Sprague has touched the most yital chord in- the popular heart. One let ter was brief, simply requesting fifty or a hundred copies for distribution. "Just the musio for the people” was the emphatic endorsement, and then,by way of postcript, " Let us know if there is any charge.” An other letter might cover two pages of fools cap, giving the writer’s views as exactly coinciding with Sprague’s, and winding up by an earnest request, in a Sumuer lacon ism, to "stick.” A third letter comes from a mem her of Congress.one of whose constit uents asks him tn send along fifty copies of Sprague’s speeches, and so on ad infinitum. Every principal towu iu the country is represented in the entire collection, which might probably number two thousand let ters, representing a total request for per haps fifty thousand copies of the Senator’s speecnes. Ordinarily Senators send their effusions to the country without any spe cially expressed desire from their constitu ents, but in this instance the people sacri fice their postage stamps to tell the Senator they want to bear him. Most of the pamph let speeches that leave here by mail find their way finally into retail butter stores; but Sprague’H, it is safe to say, will meet a better and less unctuous fate. "Well, Senator,” said we, "the work ingmen of Washington call upon you to night. What will youhave to say to them?” " There it is,” he replied, pointing to seven or eight pages of manuscript which General Halsted, a gentleman with un iron gray mustache as large as a cataract, wus diligently engaged in copying. “ Does that complete the series of your speeches, Govornor?” we asked, using his titles alternately for the sake of variety. “ Yes, sir; that’s the first series complete. I have got the Senate now, sure. I have got’em ; yas, sir, I have got ’em right so,” saying which the Senator laughed grimly, held up bis hand and gave an illustration by doubling up his fingers of the firm hold he had on the entire body of the United States Senate. " Got Anthony, too, I suppose?” " Yes, Anthouy and the whole caboodle. Got ’em in a tight place, too. They have no mercy to expect from me.” “ Pray, Senator, what has been the de meanor of tho members towards you re cently ?” “Well, before-this recent occasion of my speaking in the Senate,iheselfellows treated mo as if I was a puppy dog to be kicked around and paid bo attention to. If they wanted any favors from me tbpy came ancl patted me on the back, said ‘Sprague is a nice fellow, nicest fellow in the world, but too modest and too generous to get along in politics.’ The moment, however, I showed them what I was and what I thought of them I was puppy dog no longer. Mo, sir; growled too loud for pnppv dog. I’m mastiff now, and they are the puppy dog^.” “Why don’t they put you on the Com mittee of Finance, Governor?’’ “That’s it,” replied the Senator, “I trod on Sherman’s corns, and there’s the trouble. The last time when these committees of the Senate were being made up I wanted to go on the Finance Committee, but Sherman worked against me, anil got such pukes put on as ;Cattell and Warner. And now what have these fellows done with that long telegraph pole Sherman at their head? Not a man of them knows the true science of finance. Think of Cattell delivering an idea out of that mutton head of his upon the proper means of checking our financial de cay ! The greatest blessingthat has befallen the country is that the committees of both houses which have anything to do with our finances and taxation have had so few of their bills passed. They know just enough to be dangerous, but they will never know enough to do the country any good. Well, I was put, at my own request, on the Com mittee of Claims and the Committee of Pub lic Lands. On both committees I put the brakes down very soon. You have no idea what a rotten institution our public land system is, and it’s very few people know anything of how things are managed in these committees that have charge of the public domain. I found a claim before us one day professing to date back twenty years for a tract of land out West on which improvements had been made and settlers were living. This was only one case out of many. Suppose this claim was passed, , these settlers would have been made the 1 viotims of some imscrupulous rascal, with friends in Cengress to share his plunder.” “ Had you any brakes to put down in the Committee on Claims,” we inquired. “ Yes,” he replied ; “there’s another com raittee that people know nothing about.— Claims of tho vilest character come in there and need careful watching to prevent them from going out with an endorsement. But : I can’t give my attention to- everything. The subject on which I am now engaged is enough for any one man.” “ People say, Governor, that they do not comprehend exactly what you ure driving at. Some insinuate that you are bidding for the Presidency 5 others, that you want to cut loose from your party, and still more state in downright terms that you ore crazy.” “Hold on!” exclaimed tho Governor; “let me answer thejast charge. Yes—l am cruzy—crazy ns every reformer has been since the beginning of the world. BeoauseT retuseto follow in the ruts of that set call ingltself tho Senate of the United States the cry is raised at once, • oh ! Sprague is crazy.’ I will lot them know before Jong exactly how crazy I am. I atn not bidding ior tho Presidency either. If it were offer ed to me to-morrow I should only take it OP conditions of being at liberty to kick out