New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1852-04-15
The Two Boards of Aldermen.

The meeting of the two divisions of the Coun-
been expected, by any thing but that regularity
and order characteristic of older and more ex-
perienced assemblies.
The members were most of them young men,
fresh from the ranks Of the people, and who had
had little experience in Parliamentary forms.
Deeply imbued with the spirit Of reform, and
feelngly alive to the abuses that have heretofore
and through many long years Of misfortune
reduced our favored metropolis into almost a
state Of decline, they brought to the task before
them q degree Of ardor and enthusiasm to which
the old -fogy ism Of past administrations has
been comparatively stranger. It is not an
ordinary body of men, a
The times render it impossible that any but
men Of marked character could have aspred to
and achieved the post Our city had been la
boring under an aggregation of wrongs, that
began when its foundations were laid They
had gone on accommodating from year to year
and from administration to administration, I'M
til the body polite heaved under the mass Of
abuses, like Enceladus under the weight Of
mountains Taxes had ground down our citi-
zens until industry had become almost para
lyzed, and capital had taken wings and flown
away. One large city had been cut up and
parceled off into four petty sovereignties.
Offices had been created to maintain in idle
ness the parasites of party, and at the public
expense. Throughout every department of ad
inistration was to be s en- spirit Of Irodigality
and wastefulness that had Frustrated our credit
and threatened us with hopeless Bankruptcy
Without confidence at home, or credit abroad
the situation of affairs was alarming
We were cursed with system of police-the
relic of a monarchical age-and more objection.
able in its organization than that of imperial
France in the worst days of Fouche. Human
patience could bear it no longer. Public opin.
ion cried cut against it, and men with one ac
cord demanded change! Change, even if for the
worse, but at any rate, change! Such being
the state of public sentiment, and such the ar
dor Tor reform, new class of men came forward
and offered themselves as the servants of the
public.
The old fogies stood in the background.
Ihose VINO put themselves forward for the suf
frages of the people were a class of men VIII,
have heretofore not mingled much in public at
fairs. They were the bone, sinew, heart and
lungs of the different professions and trades
men of mind and Stamina, who understood and
felt in their business and pockets the evils tina,
oppressed the body polite, and who knew how
Y to apply the remedy
They came forward from principle of self
preservation As in France, under the reign OF
Louis the Sixteenth. The nation had been gov
erned by line of Kings, whose ancestry dated
back to the days of Charlemagne-further and
obscured by the mist of centuries. An army o;
hereditary lords, secure in their feudal castles
had launched dark oppression on the head OF
poWerless sans cutottisn until man arraiened'
the ways Of Providence and cried out against
his Maker. Evil had been grated on evil
through the dreary round of centuries. Arts
tocracy, grown rampant, had ridden san eulot
tism, booted and spurred, until it grew stubborn
and kicked. Hence the fears of monarchy ;
hence the convocation of the Tiers Fiat; and
hence the National Assembly. Hence sprung
Potion, love-sick Barbaroux, Danton, Marat
wild Vergniaud, the members of the Mountain
8 whilwinl Mirabeau,. and the rest
Within more confined limits, and on a mar