Pluralists.
--A Clergyman, or ecclesiastic, who holds more than one benefice, with cure of souls, and a big salary for each, is not generally regarded as entitled to the highest place in the calendar of saints.
Even in
England, which has an illimitable exchequer, and suffers from a plethora of prosperity, pluralism either in Church or State has become tedious in the extreme, and bids fair to disappear altogether before the improving political morality of the times.
The present state of things in the
South has called forth such a spirit of self-sacrifice as the world has never before seen.
The women have led the way, as they always do, in whatever is good and generous.
We do not say this in the language of compliment.
The women have their faults, as well as the rest of creation, but selfishness and avarice are not among them.
Of all the myriad acts of self-sacrifice performed by the
Southern women in this war, from giving up their first born to knitting a pair of stockings, we don't believe one woman of them all has expected to receive any return, or even desired any, except the deliverance of their country.
God bless them!
We wish they could make the men more like them.
We wish all the men were as single-minded, honest, and noble as the women.
And many of them are. No one can doubt that the privates in the ranks, who are fighting at eleven dollars a month, or, in other words, for nothing, are genuine patriots.--They, noble spirits, whose equals the world never saw before, are genuine patriots, whose master passion is country, not self; worthy sons, brothers, and husbands of the truest and bravest women in the world, worthy to lay the foundations of the best and grandest Government in all the earth.
We do not wish to be misunderstood.
We detest and abhor the radicalism and red republicanism that has just shown us in the old
United States how close akin they are to the most detestable Despotism.
We trust that this new Government of ours will be a genuine
representative Republic, not a Democracy; and no better model for each State in it could be found than the old Constitution of
Virginia.
This thing of letting everybody vote for everything is the source of all our present woes.
Especially in the army must the gradations of rank be distinct and well defined, and the power of authority be supreme.
We do not even advocate a very material increase of the pay of the private soldiers, for that would involve an expense which the country could not sustain, and, besides, money is to the mass of our volunteers no consideration.
Nor would we broach any such absurd idea as reducing the pay of the
Generals, the heads of the army, the men who are as important to its functions as the human head to the body.
But what we do desire is, amidst the great devotion of our women and of our soldiers, to denounce the precedent of combining civil and military offices in the same functionary, and of loading some men down with the spoils of pluralism, whilst the great mass are barely able to obtain food and raiment.
We maintain that the honor of holding a commission in an Army of Patriots, with a private's pay and barely enough more to pay the expense incident to the rank, will be reward enough to any man who is able to volunteer at all. It is honor and duty, and not the emoluments, that lead both officers and men to volunteer.
Consequently, whilst it might not be expedient now to make any material reduction, it was obviously a great mistake to begin with the mercenary principle prevalent in the
Northern and in foreign armies, for both our officers and privates entered the service for the good of their country, and did not ask or desire anything more than their support, and the gratitude of the present and future generations.
What shall we say then of multiplying offices and emoluments in the person of the same individual, especially in a period like this; but that it is in fatal opposition to republican simplicity and justice, and injurious to the public service, because the same man cannot discharge with efficiency the duties of two, three, or four different offices — of offices, too, which require essentially different qualifications, and even if the incumbent has time and talent enough, would require him to be in three or four different places at the same moment.
There are some men who, putting the deficiency of ubiquity out of the question, are able to shine in both the camp and council.
Julius CÆsar,
Napoleon Bonaparte,
George Washington,
Alexander Hamilton, were statesmen as well as soldiers; but we may be pardoned for doubting whether they have their counterpart in modern times.
Instead of enacting the part in history of either of those great personages, or, indeed, suggesting to the liveliest imagination the faintest resemblance to them, the only image that our pluralists bring before the mind is one which presents the
Commonwealth in a more ludicrous condition than that of a nursing mother of swine, for we have never heard of a sow who permitted one pig to suck half a dozen teats at a time, or of a pig who was greedy and wide-mouthed enough to perform that operation.
The science of
exploitation, universally practiced in society, is one of questionable morality and even decency, when the public is the victim of that science.
We do not think the reader will find the word in any English dictionary; but, if he wishes a clear illustration of the
French phrase from which it is derived, he may find it in a lampreys, which gets its living by
exploiting, or sucking the blood of all other fish to which it can attach itself; or, the daughter of the horse-leech, which always cries give, give, may afford another example.
There is altogether too much of the office-seeking mania in this new Republic; too strong a passion to
exploit the country for private benefit, and that at a moment when she can least afford to have her veins and arteries tapped by hungry bloodsuckers.
If any man burns with devotion to serve his country, there is as much room, and even more, to gratify it in a private station than in an official sphere.
Nothing can be more disgusting and hideous than the shameless display of selfishness and greed at a time like this, when the great mass of the people are making the grandest sacrifices ever recorded in history.
Worst of all, most brazen and infamous of all, is the ravenous pertina city of old
Lincoln office-holders, office seekers, and office-expectants, of men who stood by the flag of
Lincoln till he himself booted them into resistance, now endeavoring to assuage their disappointed appetites by jumping and snapping at everything in the shape of an office which the new Republic has to give.
