unable to do much more than merely go over its adversaries' recordfollowing up certain vestigia retrorsum leading, it may be remarked, through much mire has not a great deal of original power either for good or ill, so that its leadership is not what it would be were both House and Senate of the same complexion. Mr. Randall, our townsman, failed, we may say with sincere regret, in a contest which, so far as he was concerned, was honorably conducted, and when he was defeated he retained his self-possession sufficiently to enable him to gracefully propose that Mr. Kerr's nomination should be made unanimous. His politico-economical principles are certainly those of Philadelphia, and his private character and his reputatation as a parliamentarian stand high. He has been accused of affinity with the railroads, and of being ready to assist the scheme of governmental subsidy for the Texas Pacific Railroad. His position, whether wise or the reverse, can certainly be honestly supported by any member of Congress; and what is more to the purpose, his own friends and acquaintances said some time ago that the railroad influence was not for him but against him, and would almost certainly cost him his election. Whether this is true, and whether Kerr is not the Simon Pure, the genuine subsidizer, will be shown before very long.

DEMOCRATIC Victories, whisky suits, Indian Department revelations, all to the contrary notwithstanding, the third-term question, like Daniel Webster, still lives, and has for its sponsor the Methodist Episcopal Church. Bishop Gilbert Haven calls to the Methodist Episcopal heart to arouse, the Methodist Episcopal brain to devise, the Methodist Episcopal pocket to disgorge, that Grant may save the Southern negro from reconstructed oppression, and may survive to maintain the eclat of the worship of the great tabernacle at Washington. The comfortable consciousness of Establishment which took so many centuries to develop in England, has, Americanlike, sprung up here in eight short years; and no archbishop with an income counting by the tens of thousands in pounds, or Dean with a dozen pluralities, ever had to face a more unpleasant shock than that which our Episcopal (Methodist) father finds in the approaching dissolution of Grant. The pseudo-aristocracy was so entirely congenial to this particular species of religious organization, and the latter to it-the view of a Cabinet upon its knees enjoyed

even at occasional funeral or casual wedding, if once possessed and then lost, would be so bereaving to the bestower of highly official benediction, to him whose sermons were as proclamations, and whose prayers had 'been so to speak certified by Presidential approval, and countersigned by a Secretary of State-that life after such a loss could never be the same to Bishop Haven.

SINCE our last issue the prosecutions in the Whisky Ring have been continued with a success unprecedented in the exposure of government frauds. McDonald and Joyce have been convicted, and the counsel for the prosecution seem determined to obey the President's mandatelet no guilty man escape-to the letter. Especial interest was felt in McDonald's case, as his known intimate relations with the President, and the courtesy with which he was received at the White House long after his complicity in the whisky frauds was rumored, had given rise to many surmises, and it was thought that revelations damaging to those in high places would be made at his trial. Nothing, however, that was not known before was elicited during the trial; but after his conviction McDonald is reported to have declared "Grant is one of the best and purest men the country has produced," and "incapable of fraud." As he made substantially the same declaration regarding General Babcock, the President's secretary, we may be pardoned for doubting McDonald's ability to judge. The indictment of General Babcock by the Grand Jury on the 3d inst. has undoubtedly made a greater sensation than anything so far happening in this dirty business. The General's appeal for trial before a military tribunal was not received with favor by the community, inasmuch as a military tribunal can declare no more than that in their opinion the defendant is guilty and shall be tried before a court-martial. Moreover, the long delay in General Howard's case, when all the documentary evidence was ready and at hand in Washington, was sufficient precedent to make people believe that in this instance the trial could be prolonged ad infinitum. But General Hancock, one of the tribunal, has declared that the civil suit should take precedence of the military investigation, and Babcock comes before the court.

Another unfortunate complication in this affair is the removal of General Henderson by the Attorney-General, at the President's in

stance, and the appointment of Mr. Broadhead in his place. It seems that Henderson, in summing up in the Avery suit, was reported to have gone out of his way to make some reflections prejudicial to the President, whereupon he was called to account, and having replied that he had said nothing more than he believed it his duty to say, he was removed.

There are two aspects to this case as regards General Henderson, but as far as Grant is concerned it is conceded by the latter's friends that he was too hasty in his actions, and that in his present critical position it would have become him better to have ignored the attack and not have done anything till the trials were over. There can be no doubt but that by the removal of Henderson one of the most able and persistent opponents of the ring thieves has been disposed of.

THE great municipal statesman of New York, with that peculiar genius for getting what does not belong to him, has got his liberty. Efficient steps were instantly taken to repair the accident; on the part of the police by a profuse distribution of Mr. Tweed's photograph, and upon the part of the State by Governor Tilden's immediate return to New York to investigate. The papers tell us the significant fact that he does not talk much. Probably he enters the lonely, cold, dark region, with a depressing sense of elbow-room and of the necessity of harpooning a fraud. The immediate relatives of Mr. Tweed are inconsolable. They say this last step has ruined them, and cling to the distressing but honorable explanation that their ancestor has been stolen.

But be the cause and the result of the mystery what it may, it is almost certain to have the unfortunate effect of bringing the humane system of prison discipline-if such a word can be used without injustice as practiced in New York, into temporary disfavor. It must be admitted that the prison authorities were guilty of a mistake of judgment. The ordinary convict at hard labor might be trusted to drive around New York in a hack, or to spend an occasional evening at the theatre or at his family fireside, but unusual precautions ought to have been taken to petrify the sympathies of the gentlemen in waiting upon one of so winning and magnetic a manner as the departed.

IN order that a civil servant of the United States should be honored by a funeral national, even to the extent of a guard of honor or of a little crape on the nation's buildings, it is not enough that he should give up his heart, mind and strength in useful services to his country, but he must, like Lincoln, be shot down by an assassin during his Presidency; or, like Vice-President Wilson, he must die in the Capitol of the nation and almost in his chair of office. Republics are ungrateful; and they train their servants, not as in other countries to look forward to long, respected and rewarded careers, but rather to a precarious hold on popular favor, certain to end in entire neglect. To very few American politicians has been vouchsafed as long a public station as Henry Wilson enjoyed, and even he had lived to the full end of his honors. He was identified-like the other great men of his party, the full tale of whom has now been rendered to death with a cause, and their own usefulness and vigor ended with its success. His titles to distinction were not so much those of brilliancy or of profoundness as the more attainable but rarer qualities of courage, sincerity and tireless industry; the fine temper of a man who has been beaten for the best part of his life, but not cast down. For these good things he had in the end an abundant reward, because he enjoyed to a politician the unspeakable satisfaction of living to see the despised and outvoted causes to which he had joined himself from the start, in full possession of the people and the government. It was out of this same probationary period of trial and defeat that other brave spirits like Lincoln, Sumner, Seward and Greeley, were slowly lifted with the continued confidence of their followers into leadership.

The honors, therefore, which accompanied the body of Henry Wilson from the scene of his labors to his last, or more truly his first restingplace, were not only deserved by him, but were good for every citizen who saw them. Such an event reminds men that devotion to a Republic, which is generally faithfulness and devotion lavished upon a corporation that has no soul, is sometimes acknowledged by the nation before the people at large.

THE visit of the dignitaries of Washington to us on the 18th of December, is an event of so much local importance-indeed of importance which is more than local-that we give it a special place in

bringing "The Month" to a close. In no degree discouraged by their windy reception on the Landsdowne Heights-a locality in direct communication with the caves of Æolus, as all who have visited the one, and have heard of the other place confidently affirm-the three branches of Government, Executive, Legislative, and Judicial, sat down to a feast spread for them in Horticultural Hall, by the Merchants of Philadelphia. Surrounded by hot-beds, not of corruption, but of palms and oranges-with dishes to discuss, not bills—with toasts instead of amendments, and the decanter to move as a perpetual previous question, the change for our guests must have been pleasant while it lasted. Not but that there was more in this matter than mere junketing; not that we of Philadelphia thought so little of ourselves, or the functionaries of the government, as to suppose that we could bribe them into appropriating our needed million and a half by an elaborate dinner. The object which was intended, and which it is believed is in a satisfactory way of being accomplished, was that it should be clearly understood in Washington that the Centennial Celebration is now ready to begin that nothing substantial remains to be done that the house is built, everything prepared-that we have but to open the door for the nation's guests, and that all we ask of Congress is to provide that we shall start without the burden of debt. That the request was a fair one, and the method taken of emphasizing it is legitimate and proper, no one, we think, will deny.

It is perhaps correct to say that no other means would have availed to ensure such a general interest in the result of the Exposition, as has been expressed by all the influential visitors to the Centennial grounds on Saturday, the 18th of December. Perhaps the most happy part of the whole programme is, as has been said, that the whole expense of conveying so many visitors from Washington and entertaining them whilst on a visit, was not borne by the invited guests, nor was it a tax on the finances of the Centennial Commission, but was the spontaneous gift of Philadelphia citizens who are resolved that the one hundreth anniversary of the national independence shall not fail of being worthily celebrated for want of public energy and means at their disposal.

After an inspection of the various buildings constructed and in course of construction, the party assembled in the Horticultural Hall to the number of 800, and partook of a repast, of which it may be