The Spirit Of Democracy

MR. EDITOR: It is to me very surprising that anybody should take exceptions to the course of our Senator, George H. Pendleton, in voting for the confirmation of Judge Matthews. I know Judge Matthews, though I have never met him since he was Clerk of the Ohio House of Representatives in 1848. We have drifted apart. He knows, and I know, why.

If Ohio is the pivotal State of the Union, let her so be. If we have made Ohio men Presidents and Judges, let us continue so to do.

I believe and I know that the confirmation of Judge Matthews was a matter right to be done. Why? Nobody questions his eminent ability, legal learning, and his high moral character. Every Judge on the Supreme Bench was pleased to hear of his nomination, and urged his confirmation. They differed widely, as Field and Harlan did, on many questions, but they all concurred and desired that his (Matthews') learning, youth and strength- intellectual and physical--should be added to the Bench. The Ohio Bar, including many Ohio Democrats, favored his nomination.

It was well known and admitted that on all questions of personal liberty-the limitation of power in the Federal Government, and on all political questions likely to come before the Court-he would hold with the Judges who had held to the old Democratic creed.

That he was extremely popular with all Senators, who had served with him, all must admit.

We all know (and if they do not I pity their ignorance) that all New England (God save the mark) was against him, because they wished, hoped and desired that the vacant place should be filled by Senator Edmunds.

All the Stalwarts (a name that stinks in the nostrils of honest men) were against him, because they thought, and rightly, that he would not uphold the villainous provisions of the "Reconstruction Acts."

Further: The "Riffraff" of Republicanism were against him. Why? Because he was a Democrat in disguise, and would be in a place to act with Democrats. Is that an objection? I think not.

The "Money Power" was against him because he was a silver man, a greenback man, and believed in the rights of the people as against the powers of monopoly, whether banks, railroads, high tariff or Money. (Money, that's the god.)

All these powers combined were opposed to him. They said he was a railroad corporation attorney and in favor of these corporations. Every New York paper opposed his confirmation, and with very good reason, because all of them are owned, or controlled by railroads or their operators. An examination of his arguments will show, conclusively, the falsity of these charges.

Even his bitterest enemies became so well satisfied of the baselessness of these charges that they abandoned them in disgust.

They charge him with manipulating the returns in Louisiana, when it is perfectly certain that he left New Orleans before the visiting statesmen began operations, and his subsequent actions were simply those of an advocate before the Electoral Commission.

My friends, I have been in political life, I might say, all my life. I believe I have written the words of truth and soberness. I will not forsake what I think is right, and fly to evils that I know not of.

JAS. R. MORRIS.