Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-09-05
MONDAY, SEPT. 5, 1850.

The city of Baltimore is beginning to gather
the fruits of the violence and disorder which
has long troubled it, There is not another
city in the land where ruffianism has organized
itself, and assumed to be one of the political
and social influences of the community, with
so much audacity as in that city. When the
Know Nothing epidemic was at its height, the
insane war of races led in several cities to the
preparation of the most fearful crimes But
these were anomalous and exceptional cases.
In Baltimore they seem to form part OF an
organized and permanent system of brutality,
which has been patronized and encouraged SO
long that it has almost passed beyond the con-
troll of decent and law-abidipg citizens. The
telegraph finds it necessary to caution the pub
lie against placing implicit reliance in the re-
ported outrages committed there; and the
claw and order" movement which is an
nounced to make its first public demonstra-
ton to-day, is put forward as one of great
strength before which the rufiians have already
quailed.
Allowing that there has been much exagger-
the fact, startling to us who live under munic-
ipal governments, in whose care every man
feels that his person and his property are al
ways safe, that good citizens have been driven
to public and united movement, purely as
measure of self-preservation. While the other
class of citizens, organized under names indi-
eating the barbarism which they practice, hold
out q kind of defiance against attempts to
restrain or control them. This condition of
things is not new one. The mischief-work-
ing elements have been operative there for ma
ny years, and have been manifested chiefly in
political direction during the excitement of
campags But they acquired well-defned
form and consistency in 1854-5, when so many
pernicious elements unheard of before were
forced into our politics. Each party had its
gang of ruffians whose work it was to accom-
plish by violence or cunning, what they were
too weak to effect by peaccable and lawful
methods. The party which espoased democ.
racy sent its armed scoundrels to the voting
The party which assumed to be the champion
of the purity of the ballot box sent its hired
agents there to stuff them with bogus votes
And these things were done with the consent
and completely OF men high in political and
social position, and to whom honest men unac-
quainted with their practices, were accustomed
to look with feelings of consideration and es-
TEEN.
1t is not strange, therefore, that the men
who have learned rascality in such efficient
and faithful schools, should also have found it
profitable to practice it on their own account.
Many of the respectable" and conservative"
citizens who are beginning to cry enough, with
so much indignation and so well-affected zeal,
themselves fostered the mschiefs under which
they suffer, and which have grown till
they are undoubtedly too grievous to be
borne In their present movement the sympa-
thies of all right-minded men will be with
them. Successful villainy anywhere wounds
the aggregate morality of mankind. But no
one can fail to see that in the outrages which
impelled them to this step they have been suf-
tering kind of just punishment for the part
which many of them have consciously had in
training these corrupters of the public morals
and destroyers of the public peace.