[345]
Congress appealed to.
If the members of the congressional majority at Washington are not weaker and more wicked men than the sternest of their political opponents would willingly believe them to be, they will compel a prompt exposure of the authors of this shameful thing—a prompt exposure and a punishment as prompt. The President has done his duty in laying bare the facts, and will do his duty, we doubt not, in arresting at once and summarily this continuous outrage upon the national character. But we live in an epoch of congressional inquiries into national scandals and national rumors of all kinds, and the conscience of the country will hold the present Congress to a dread responsibility if it shirk or evade a duty more important to our national honor than any which it has as yet assumed.
