The Extra Session And The Future

Thanks to telegraphs and raiiways, enough time has passedsince the extra session ended to form a pretty good idea of the general verdict of the country, asexpresaed by the newspapers, on the doings of Congress and on the issue raised between the legislative and the executive branches of the Government. The Stalwart press, as if by prearrangement and witb one voice, declares that the extra session was a device of certain cunning Democrats, contrived to promote a new issue for 1880. Precisely what that new issue was to be or who those Demócrata were the stalwart newspapers are, not agreed. One journal is quite certain that the object was to dig up and fight over again thequestion whether a State has the constitutional right to secede from the Union upon what it may think an adeauate srrievaiipa A nother journal has no doubt that the purpose was to widen the existing branches between the two ends of Pennsylvania aveuue by enacting measures in Congress whichthe Republican members must resist but which Mr. Ilayes would approve. Still another is satisfled that the object of the Democratie conspirators was to bewilder the country with what Harper's Weekly ia good enough to cali "solemn poppycock" about bayonets at the polls and the bulldozing of States by the Federal Government. Whatever may be their separate notions as to the motives of the promoters of the extra session, the stalwart press are all at one, however, on the point that the extra session has been a failure, that it has excited universal public disgust and the Democrat3 have been demoralized both by what has been done and by what has been left undone. The independent and n o-party press of the country, on the other hand, is beginning to see the issues brought to the front by the extra session are of more urgency and inportanee than was at flrst supposed. It begins to appear to such journals that if the Democratie majuiiLv weie aX tirst undistiplined and without a plain prograinme, this ceased to be the case long before the the session ended. Certain Western Democratie niembers and Senators at the outset were disposed to indulge in rathertall caucus talk, and undertook to make war on the Exective in the Chinese f ashion with tiger masks and explosive crackers. Independent journals can see the absurdity of this, but tliey can also see that it affects the manner rather than the matter of the session's work, and in no wise touches the vital question whether the issue about jaron and elections ought to have been made and is a sound issue. Sensible men all oyer the country are beginning to understand that the question whether each State shall still be held responsible, as it was from 1787 to 1870, for suppressing fraud and OfilTOffUt JMftQpu toaRattóns .uader or with secession in 18Ö1. And such men are in a plain way to perceive that this is no time for increasïng the power of a central authority at Washington to sit upon and suppress political opinions all over the country. In the lirst place- and this is a great deal to say of any legislativa body new to the control of legislation - no new general legislation of any consequence was carried through at the extra session except the excellent quininebill. Tl.is shows that strong and steady hands were really at the Democratie helm to keep the ship on her trae course, in respect to silver and to everything else. There was discussion and there was disagreement and there was noise and confusión, such as are to be expected in every popular body, but the final action was sound and safe. So much for what was not done ! In respect to what was done the result is also satisfactory. The South has secured impartial juryuien in politicaland criminal prosecutions - a reform of itself worth all the cost, worry and vexation of the extra session. The value of this bit of new legislation cannot be adequately appreciated in the North, where juries packed by judges aml marshals to convict have been unknown. It was upon tb at feature of the extra session that Senator Bayard chietly set his heart, and his -victory on this point certainly lacks no element of completeness. As to the army at the polls, not much has been gained in the way of positive legal enactments to restrain the Executive. Mr. Ilays has, it is true, signed alaw forbidding the nse of the army as a pólice torce around the baliot-boxes. which would suffice bo prevent a conscientious Presidenta trom aüowing bayoneta to be used to "keep the peace" at the polls unless the State asks for them. But the stalwarts may and probably will so bulldoze Mr. ïlayes in 1880 that he will order the army around the ballotboxes to enf orce the mandates of deputy marshals seeking to arrest voters. Davenport, for example, may announce bis purpose to promute the arrest of anv one offering to vote onnaturalization papers issued in 1868 9; he may represent that the deputy marshals, are likely to be resisted by a forcé they cannot overéeme, and thereupon Hayes may be compelled to conimand the army to march to the assistance of the deputy marshals, not as a pólice forcé (he will be careful to say) but under the Davenportstatue to enforce the election laws. Nevertheless, the discussion over the election laws has been of incalculable public good. It will edúcate those who have recently beoome voters - and it is the younger voters, be it remembered, who generally bring about political lutions through the ballot-box, it these new voters of 1880 and the voters who are unattached to either political party come to the conclusión, as we think they will, that the national election laws ought nowto be and can now be safely repealed, and that each state ought to be left to execute its own election laws these voters will surely give their votes to a candidate lor President, if that candidate be satIsfactary in hls personal character, who will promotü the repeal. But' however that may be, an impartial Federal jury systeui in the South, we repeat, has been secured, and that, once more, is worth all that the extra seasion has cost, even if we take no account of the sorely needed light respeeting State electicms and State rights in elections which the session hasdiffused throughout the country. - JV. Y. World. __ Wisconsin has 3S9.380 cows, or more thanhalf the number contained in atl I New England.