Daily Los Angeles Herald

Fine Shade or Impudence.

We have never failed to derive intense amusement from the superb cheek exhibited occasionally by Republican orators in and out of Congress. Mr. Eugene Hale afforded the latest example of this impudence in his remarks in the House of Representatives day before yesterday on the removal of Door Keeper Polk.

The Democratic House detected Mr. Polk in illegal practices and promptly dismissed him. Presto! Mr. Hale rises in his seat and proclaims that the Democratic party is unfit to administer any department of the government. The fact is that Polk's transgressions, as compared with the staple article of Republican delinquency, were venial in the extreme.

It would take a thousand Polks to make up the sum total of the Custom House frauds of the Lent-Murphy regime in New York, or of Robeson or of Belknap. It is not alleged that Polk embezzled or stole anything. His offence was that of exceeding his authority in the way good natured, yielding men of any party are liable to do it at any time. His punishment was swift and exemplary.

His crime was aggravated neither by perjury nor larceny. There was in his offence none of the "addition, division and silence" recommended by Wm. H. Kemble, of the Pennsylvania Republican ring, to his corrupt confederates in Washington.

There was nothing of the Credit Mobilier turpitude which has retired so many Republican pseudo statesmen to private life. Mr. Polk, unlike Schuyler Colfax, did not take a bribe for his influence in bringing about railway legislation in Congress, and then swear that he had not received the bribe, and then have his perjury made manifest by the production of a check and the memorandum book in which Oakes Ames jotted down his Union Pacific transactions. All this was done by Colfax while he filled the exalted office of Vice-President.

Unlike Belknap, Polk had no handsome wife who flaunted about in Washington society on the strength of dividends derived from sharing the corrupt gains of post traders. In every respect, in comparison with the unbridled peculations of Republican officials, Mr. Polk's transgressions were bagatelles, although his punishment has been condign and crushing.

Republicans who feel disposed to inveigh against an occasional Democrat who forgets his duty should remember that they are but men, and that all of them have not the moral stamina needed to protect them from the contagion of official roguery which has been endemic in Washington, for the past fifteen or sixteen years, in the highest posts of the government.

Belknap was not the only Secretary of War who was obliged to retire from office on account of the taint of corruption. Old Simon Cameron, of Lincoln's Cabinet, preceded him.

In view of the melancholy panorama of Credit Mobilier, Post Trader, Suttler, Quartermaster, Navy Yard, Custom House and Whiskey Ring rogueries, which have flashed in the eyes of the people of the United States, with a rotten phosphorescence, during the past fifteen or sixteen years, Republican Congressmen would do well not to arouse the public attention to a contrast which is entirely and conspicuously in favor of the Democracy.