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Show SECRETARY OF INTERIOR HITCHCOCK. In an editorial in the Sun, it may be sincere or it may be sarcastic, there is a demand that the President Presi-dent shall issue a message "in defense, encouragement encourage-ment and championship of the Honorable Ethan 'Allen Hitchcock, Secretary of the Interior." It says : "Mr. Hitchcock has been striving, in his modest way, to save the people's property from plain pillage, whereby he has lodged a number of more or less prominent citizens on the pathway to the penitentiary, peniten-tiary, with others yet to come. But he is especially anxious to stand between the Indians and their-would-be looters and spoilers." The result is. as the Sun describes it, that he has been badgered and hampered. There is this to say about Mr. Hitchcock, he is unfit for a high office in the Republic. He is probably an honest man, but he is deficient in life's courtesies, and in his office j for the past two or three years he has seemed to go on the assumption that anyone who comes near him. or anyone who attempts to acquire property under the strict laws of the United States, must necessarily be a dishonest man. to be snubbed, to be bullied, and if possible, to be thwarted. It is easy for a good lawyer to judge whether what a man is asking of the Government is right or not. If right, there is no reason why any officer of the Government should throw obstacles in the way of ' the attainment, and there are certain little courtesies which are due between gentlemen, and which should always be observed. The higher the office of the man the more careful he should be not to offend. If it is the Secretary of the Interior, which is a great office, if the man who holds it is worthy of it. he is entitled to profound respect, but he in that office does not add to his own dignity, nor to the respect of the people brought in contact with him. by forever keeping it in plain evidence that he. as Secretary, is a little more than of the common mold. "While Secretary he is just a man and the obli- igations of his office impose upon him an absolute duty he being a trustee of the Government, to treat , the sovereign people of the Republic who approach f. him as one gentleman treats another. |