THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 181 



successors of John C. Calhoun, Felix Grundy, J. P. 

 Benjamin, Robert Hunter, and John C. Breckinridge. 

 We shall not needlessly write names, but the country 

 knows well to whom we refer. It knows that there 

 is no feature of this deplorable time more marked than 

 the lowering of the Senate. When we consider the 

 manner of men in the Senate, their overruling motives, 

 their greed for money and patronage, their enmity to 

 any measure that will limit their power, we cannot 

 marvel that even Grant has surrendered. He could 

 do nothing without the Senate, could not even remove 

 ,ari officer of his Cabinet. Of course he surrendered. 

 He might have fought the Senate ; but he saw how 

 Johnson failed. It required more civic courage and 

 foresight than Grant possesses to see that while John- 

 son wounded and assailed the country he had the 

 country with him. 



" The Senate fought Johnson and ended in dividing 

 the patronage with him. Then it fought no longer. 

 It menaced Grant until he threw Hoar and Cox into 

 its shambles. Then it became acquiescent. As long 

 .as Grant strove to give tone and majesty to his admin- 

 istration and to elevate the public service, the Senate 

 .stood in his path, like the ominous giant who threat- 

 ened the pilgrim Christian on his way, to the land of 

 Beulah and the gates of the house called Beautiful. 

 To-day it is an independent power, composed largely 

 of audacious men, representing the lowest strata in 

 our political life, owing allegiance to railroads and 

 tariff combinations and monopolies caring nothing 

 for the people whom it does not represent, and to 

 whom it only owes a remote and contingent responsi- 

 bility warring upon the Executive until it was ap- 



