Mr. Henderson's Dismissal

Mr. HenderBon is punished for " attaeking the President." Yesterday we reprinted i'roin the St. Louis IiepuUican's report the passages of his speeoh in which aliusious to the president occur. If he did uot use precisfcly the language put in his mouth by the reporters - as it seems he did not - he inust have said something in the near neighborhood of it ; the neceeaities of his argument required plainness of speech, aud he undoubtedly used it. Whother he ' attacked the President " in doing so, ia a quostion upon whioh our readers, are as competent to pass as we are. But we now find it stated in a Washington special that the " attack " was made at an earlier day, November 29, when Mr. Henderson declared hia belief that " fraud would be traced even to the White House." We have had the curioaity to turn back to the report of that day's proceedings. We do not find Mr. Henderson using the language attributed to him, or anything like it. What he did say on that day was that the Babcock telegrama would not have been made publio on the trial of Avery if the defense had not forced them out, but would have been quietly aubmitted in the first iustance to the Grand Jury. He added in reply to remarka by Judge Krum (we quote from the St. Louis A'eptiblicaris report) that he " repudiated the idea of any intent to cast reflections on the President. The tact that His Exoellency had had such fïiends as Joyce, Babcock and McDonald weighed as nothing as against the oharacter he has always borne and still bears." And in reply to a further remark : " No 'drive, whatever was being made by the prosecution against President Grant. It was far from the opinión of himself or auy of his associates that President Grant was in anywise implicated in this conspiracy. He protested agiiinst any such charge." With more of the same tenor. This may be an "attack", but if so the raalice of it is too subtle to be deteoted by the average mind. Both at Washington and St. Louis the inciident has made a profound sensation - as it well inay. At the capital it is construed as meaning that the president has at last "got his mad up." Mr. Dawes discpvered some years ago - or momentarily thought he did - that the Administration was not overstooked with the spirit and intellligence of reform. Other people had been forced to the same conclusión earlier. It is only just to say that General Grant has hithertobehavedremarkably well in the matter of these whisky-ring prosecutions. But now that it is his own nose that is on the Bristow-Jewell reform-grindstone, now that the " scandal-houuds " - as Joyce called them - have followed the trail into the White House itself, and the names of three or four of his nearest kin are publicly connected with the frauda, he is not unnaturally growing tired of it. His temper begins to show signa of wear and tear Probablyhe is in inuoh the same frame of mind as the colorñd convert whose pastor let him slip out of his hands at the immerslson : "Some gemman's nigger'll be killed yet by dis dam foolishness." Mr. Henderson has been the gtroke-oar in these prosecutions. He has obtained a verdict in every case he has tried : Joyce, McDonald, and Avery.have been convicted in quick succeasion, and the outlook for the President's other indicted friends-McKee, Munn and Babcock was not a cheerful one. The Attorney-General's order comes (o them like a reprieve. Messrs. Babcock, Munn and the rest, indicted and to be indicted, are in luck. The Presieent's theory is understood to be that there is a '"conspiracy" - not against the revenue but against him. Mr. Henderson is in it, he says, and Mr. Schurz is in it. There .are those near his person and having his ear, who are trying to persuade him that the most dangerous conspirator of all sita in his Cabinet. They have not succeeded as