In Fact, The Charges Made Against Him By The
Committee Of The House Of Representatives Have Not Been Allowed To
Stand In His Way.
He is politically popular with a large section of
the nation, and therefore it has been thought well to promote him to
high place.
Whether he be fit for such place either as regards
capability or integrity, seems to be considered of no moment.
The same argument must be used with reference to the other gentlemen
named. Mr. Welles is still a cabinet minister and Secretary of the
Navy. It has been found impossible to keep Mr. Cameron in the
cabinet, but he was named as the minister of the States government
to Russia, after the publication of the Van Wyck report, when the
result of his old political friendship with Mr. Alexander Cummings
was well known to the President who appointed him and to the Senate
who sanctioned his appointment. The individual corruption of any
one man - of any ten men - is not much. It should not be insisted on
loudly by any foreigner in making up a balance-sheet of the virtues
and vices of the good and bad qualities of any nation. But the
light in which such corruption is viewed by the people whom it most
nearly concerns is very much. I am far from saying that democracy
has failed in America. Democracy there has done great things for a
numerous people, and will yet, as I think, be successful. But that
doctrine as to the necessity of smartness must be eschewed before a
verdict in favor of American democracy can be pronounced. "It
behoves a man to be smart, sir." In those words are contained the
curse under which the States government has been suffering for the
last thirty years. Let us hope that the people will find a mode of
ridding themselves of that curse. I, for one, believe that they
will do so.
CHAPTER VIII.
BACK TO BOSTON.
From Louisville we returned to Cincinnati, in making which journey
we were taken to a place called Seymour, in Indiana, at which spot
we were to "make connection" with the train running on the
Mississippi and Ohio line from St. Louis to Cincinnati. We did make
the connection, but were called upon to remain four hours at Seymour
in consequence of some accident on the line. In the same way, when
going eastward from Cincinnati to Baltimore a few days later, I was
detained another four hours at a place called Crestline, in Ohio.
On both occasions I spent my time in realizing, as far as that might
be possible, the sort of life which men lead who settle themselves
at such localities. Both these towns - for they call themselves
towns - had been created by the railways. Indeed this has been the
case with almost every place at which a few hundred inhabitants have
been drawn together in the Western States. With the exception of
such cities as Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, settlers can
hardly be said to have chosen their own localities.
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