New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1857-02-23
NEW ORLEANS AND BATON ROUGE
RAILROAD sssA

The bill 10 extend the aid Of the State to TINS much
needed and important public Improvement III t'e
same manner and form that the State mas eStenoea
aid to the New Orleans and jackson, the Vickspurg
and Shreveport, and the New Orleans ana opeieasas
Railroads, came up for consideration as the special
order Of the day. for its second reading In the House
Of Representatives at IL o'clock on Thursday last.
Considerable and unexpected opposition was made
against the BILL although we Gone of the editors OF
this paper was present during the progress of the de-
bate that ensued) were unable to discover anything
approxmating solvent argument in the objections
urged by the opponents of the measure. Thus much
feel constrained to say for truth compes us to say
IT, expressly STIMULATING that offensive interpreted
ton shall be placed upon our remarks. We never
impugn mems motives They are not amenable to
Journalistic criticism. But it is fair and legitimate to
take up and discuss the acts and speeches of public
men on public measures. 49,.
The opposition to the bill was so captious and nm.
reasonable, yet persevering and unrelenting, and
witha so devoid OF sound basis to rest upon that it
led our mind into reflections of peculiar character
To hear the opponents of the bill talk and of
them talked violently, stranger would have been
led to conclude that the opposition represented vast
majority of the paying interests of this fair and
wealthy commonwealth of Louisiana. AS we didn't
know positively, and as we wanted to know, we pro
eeeded to examine the best, in fact the only source
whence accurate information could be derived, viz
The very able and elaborate report of the present
( cellent Auditor of Public Accounts, Hon. Samuel +
| Marks.
That examination absolutely demonstrated far NOR
4 facts than we supposed to exist, namelythat thos
who represented constituencies paying an over
wheming majority of the monies paid into the Stat
Treasury were in favor of granting the subscription
asked for at the hands of the Legislature. We hat
! felt confident, all along, that the tax-payng com
mnnities as represented in dollars and cents on tn
books of the accounting officers of the government
were strongly favorable to the road, but we did no
\ imagine the preponderance would be so great-woult
/ go so far beyond our calcuation-wouid approximat
four-ffths, on the first important vote taken.
On the passage of the first section of the Railroa
bill, for the second reading, on Thursday last, tn
Representatives of the following named parishes vote
as set down in the appended table, The votes of tn
parishes which were divided omitted, they woul
| make no difference in the computation we propose
present. There may be some slight errors in tn
figures, possibly, but they will not invalidate to an
material extent the correctness OF the statistics
I which we now call the attention Of the public.
The vote on the first section, alluded to above, We
regarded generally, as test vote, although we d
not so regard it, owing to the absence Of are
number of the friends of the bill. 1t stood by pa
fishes, with the assessment of each annexed,
Il follows: s.~... ..sr. ... ..