Mobile daily commercial register and patriot., 1841-07-28
For fhp Register TIE WHIG CANDIDATES
NNH1 " HEHU VII UT N1aN AND CITY CHARTER.


 has written his defence, he calls it, and t appears in his paper of Saturday. What il amounts 10, propose to examine presently.
 First, however, let me call attention to the signi-
 cant fact, that he is wary enough to take care of himself exclusively, and has not word say in be- half of his colleagues, who were guilty as he, and have been as strongly arraigned before the pubic. Nor does either of them undertake to say word Tor hlmself.-Mr. Hollinger may afford to be sient, for he has been dismissed from public life probably for ever and his course upon this or any other public question, is of no sort of consequence to any body But Gen. BATES is a candidate for the Senate and MT. Prince IS up for reelection to the House. Has MT. Langdon nothing to say for them, and they mo- thing to say for themsevesl At Tuscaloosa silence would better have become them, il would have been well if they had stood mute then, occasions when they followed Mr. Langdon obsequiously a his abuse of the poor voters of Mobile. Now, however, arragn- ed before their nsued constituency they must speak or be condemned We who are held up by these worthies to much odium, in such insuferable terms, want Messrs. Prince and Bates to answer openly or be taken as confessing the offence which their colleague has tried to shift from himself and leave unlightened upon them. We want to know whether they follow and echo him here, clearly they did at Tuscaloosa whether they will assume to have been unluckily reported;as he; whether they too, all the time to say something which their language did not express, and meant the of what their words expressed and could express thmg else; ;-whether being friends of the poor voters, they were marvelously misrepresented by their poli tcal advisers as well he,-and all these were mi- nutey described having made outand-out speeches
 in defence of the property qualification, and abuse of those who do not possess it;-and whether, after three months of silent approval of this report when it had been spread throughout the state true pie
 ure Of us by our representatives, they too, like Mr. Langdon shall on the of the election, be smitten with the sudden discovery that this has been accountable and miraculous mistake, to all that they said, all they meant to say, and all they did. Such story agreed upon between three respec- table enough to represent county in the legislature would furnish narrative of incredible concidences fit to be placed foremost amongst the tales of the vellous which ingenious men have collected in books | to perplex feeble understandings.
 If this miracle be not relied upon are curious to know what BATES and PRINCE can have to say for themselves. Silence is confession and the county will take it;hut silence is better than the additional ignomy they would incur by adopting the line of defence of their associate, his pary shuf fling with facts and notorious trihing with the mon sense of the public. leave them to the conse- quences of their trembling and guilty silence while enquire into the answer of their colleague.
 Let us keep him to the point which he is striving to avoid throughout his address.
 bill was introduced to give the voters for Mayor
 m the city the right to vote for common councinen al The present voters for Mayor therefore, are the class to whom the extension of the franchise was to be gwen and no other class therefore the subject of debate This bill Mr. Lang'on is accused of hav- ing denounced, and for three months he allowed t to pass uncontradcted, as that would in his opinion
 favor yoe ues, HeUes and ineeadareS. He went far as to impute to Mir. Houston of Washington who fla yored the bil that he the guardian of such tties! and sympathised through ignorance, with Ca class to whom the 6rn''ags, robb1ies and murders in the city owing.
 These words Mir. Langdon admits and one would suppose, the application to be mistaken for there was no proposition before the legislature which any body could speak but the simple one to extend the franchise to the voting class for Mayor and Aldermen in this city.
 Sensible of this Mir. Langdon nyents an applica- ton having no foundation in facts, preposterous it. self and contradictory of his material allegations He mistakes the argument of Mir. Houston to make
 it serve as an application for his answer, yet gains nothing by misrepresentations. To the false arpu. ment which he attributes to his opponent his pretend- ed answer is absurd reply and the whole contains admissions which fatal to his most strenuous al- legations.
 This is his explanation:
 {" The gentleman from Washington had said in his speech that it great hardship for those charged uith crime in Mobile to be tried by men whom they had no voice in electing He dwelt at considerable length, much more than appears in the report, the great har dship of the In my reply, alluded to this br anch ohis argument and remarked that the gentleman had an exceeding sympathy for the crim- nals who infested Mobile, and the muttudes who hung about the city for the purposes of plumber. thought this class, which denominated, and think correctly, [" rogues thieves and incendiaries" de- serving of no sympathy or favorable considerations This is the class to which alluded and now ask,
 is there an honest citizen in this community who will take 1t to himse and say he belongs to fhs class?" Now, here is cunning; but the cunning that over reaches itself; there essential improbablity and plain inconsistency in the whole story. Mr. Houston knew too well the'suhject before the House to have argued thus, and the reported debate contradcts Mr. Langdon's version. The subject was the admission of certain well defined class to increased suf- frage, and Mr. Houston's real argument was good one, which his opponent would be better employed in answering than in falsifying He said that man "might be charged with some offence against the city ordinances, and find himself in the hands and at the mercy of men whom he had no voice in electing D. This is unquestionably sound argument against any arist cratic branch in the city. It was legitimate to contend that every subject to the city ordnan- ought to have equal voice in making them and in selecting those that administer them; and that to give the rich as class, control these municipal rights, is oppressive to the poor think Mir. Houston reasoned well, and SO, believe, will the class think whom he was defending. Mir. Lang- d0ns reply, as he now describes it, was exraordina- ry. He pretends that this argument encourages cr- minds! he himself now of having been then so ignorant of the law of charters and the particular bill he was discussing, as to suppose that extending the right of suffrage proposed by the bill, would give license to such crimes as he enumerated, theft, arson, robbery and murder. He talked of these as offences against the cfy ordinances! and pretends to have rebuked Mir. Houston for fellowship with this of animals, because he favored the right of the disanchised voters for Mayor and Aldermen to have an equal right in passing the city ordinances which they might be punished for infringing. 1 acqut Mr. Langdon of the ignorance of which he accuses him self of confoundng crimes and feonies of which the State takes cognisance, and which are created by statute the law, with the offences against police and other municipal regulations created by the city charter. It arises from the helpless condition which makes some explanation necessary, and this, miserable as its, is the best 1that occurs to him.
 Two things are therefore clear, that he misrepre- sents Mr. Houston by imputng to him an argument in favour of criminals when he argued in favor of equality among all the voters of the city and that he now stutifes himself by pretending that he feared the triumph Of teUes, murders and iacendiaries from the allowance of this equal right the class of voters named in the bill.
 To his enquiry then what honest citizen will csn- fess himself to belong to ths ciass may be answer ed fearlesy, that every honest ctzen though he may own land, may boast of belonging to the class as indicated by Mir. Houston, ,-men who do consider it hardship to be subject to be subject to ordinances and regulations made and administered by those in whose election they have voice, but who will not nevertheless patiently hear themselves classed by Langdon and his colleagues with rogues, thepes and incsndiaries.
 And after all, in-concocting this precious piece of absurdty fer defence, Mir. Iangddn has overreach- ed himself in other respects If all the other arpu. ments attributed to him, be as he says they were mis-