Speaking on this point, _The Nation_ of Nov.

17, 1870, said:-- "The newspapers are generally believed to exaggerate most of the abuses they denounce; but we say deliberately, that no denunciation of the civil service of the United States which has ever appeared in print has come up as a picture, of selfishness, greed, fraud, corruption, falsehood, and cruelty, to the accounts which are given privately by those who have seen the real workings of the machine." Enumeration is here unnecessary.

Enough crops out in every day's history to show that moral principle, the only guarantee in a government like ours for justice and honesty, is sadly wanting.
And evil is also threatening from another quarter.

Creeping up from the darkness of the dark ages, a hideous monster is intently watching to seize the throat of liberty in our land.

It thrusts itself up into the noonday of the ninteenth century, not that it may be benefited by its light and freedom, but that it may suppress and obscure them.