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It remains to be seen whether the Hartford Courant and other newspapers of the same proclivities, will ever again wave the “bloody shirt” in the field of politics.  This paper, viewing the events of the past month, has repeatedly thanked God (in print) that, “now we have neither North nor South, but one united country.”  Few events in ceremonial history, we confess, have been more significant than the presence of two Confederate generals as pall-bearers at the funeral of GENERAL GRANT.  This ought, if indeed it does not, to mark the close of the Civil War and of all the divisions and combinations which have had their roots and their justifications in it.  The “bloody shirt” can be waved no more, except as an insult to the memory of the late first citizen of the Republic.  On what basis, then, are political parties henceforth to rest?  What, in the future, will give a meaning to the names Republican and Democrat, or make it national and patriotic for an American citizen to enlist in one of the two organizations and wage political war against the other?

We can detect only three great questions now before the American people.  One is the Tariff, the other the reform of the Civil Service, and the last is the problem of labor.  It is noticeable that the division of opinion regarding either of these questions does not correspond with the lines of the established parties.  There are Protectionists, as also Free Traders, in both parties; both parties are equally puzzled by the labor question; and though the Democratic Party has hitherto been re-actionary on the subject of the Civil Service, a Democratic President is to-day the champion and the hope of Reform.  On the whole, it begins to look as if each of the two great parties was in a state of incipient disintegration.  On the one hand, the Independent Republicans, whose votes elected Grover Cleveland, although still professing allegiance to the Republican party, will never again ally themselves with those who supported Mr. Blaine.  On the other side the Bourbon Democrats, who helped to elect Mr. Cleveland, are now in arms against him.  The presidency of Cleveland is to say, the least the triumph of national over party government; and should he continue to go forward bravely in his present course, he may rest assured that the hearts of all good citizens will go with him, and that his triumph will be complete.  The day is here when thinking men will have to brush conventionalism aside, and confront with open minds the problem which the course of events has now distinctly set before them for solution.

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The records of our own time are being gradually embalmed in a permanent form.  MR. BLAINE has given us his first volume of what perhaps are better classed as impressions rather than as memoirs pour servir; we are promised the Personal Memoirs of GENERAL GRANT; and now at last, after many years’ waiting, we have the completed works of CHARLES SUMNER, the incorruptible son of Massachusetts, from the press of Messrs. Lee and Shepard, who have spared no expense as publishers.