The Massachusetts Democrats have this year a grand opportunity to assert
their independence, and to set a wholesome example to the party in other
states. They can do no safer, wiser, or more honorable thing than to
nominate Judge Woodbury, a Democrat of Democrats, as their
standard bearer.
The Boston _Evening Record_ is a sample of daily journalism that is
getting to be rather common nowadays. Like many other of its
contemporaries, it seems to be impressed with the idea that the province
of a newspaper is to _coin_ facts rather than to chronicle them;
and that editorial ability consists in getting away from the truth as
far as possible.
In a recent issue, it comments on General Butler's article in
the _North American Review,_ and more particularly upon the reason
why the General did not desire the Republican nomination for the Vice
Presidency in 1864, expressed by him as follows:--
Being made to sit as presiding officer over the senate, to listen for
four years to debates more or less stupid, in which I can take no part
or say a word, nor even be allowed a vote upon any subject which
concerns the welfare of the country, except when my enemies might think
my vote would injure me in the estimation of the people, and therefore,
by some parliamentary trick, make a tie on such question, so I should be
compelled to vote; and then, at the end of four years (as nowadays no
Vice President is ever elected President), and because of the dignity of
the position I had held, not to be permitted to go on with my
profession, and therefore with nothing left for me to do save to
ornament my lot in the cemetery tastefully, and get into it gracefully
and respectably, as a Vice President should do.
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