The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1868-07-25
Exact Justice -

1t is the proiessed aim OF the Radical
party to DO "exact justice" rs between
the white and black races. Neither is
to be placed before the other in any Of
the privileges or immunities Of citizen
ship. Public benefits are to be free tC
both, and all the blessings which Gov
ernment can confer are to be shared
alike by black aud white.
Such is the Radical theory. Such is
not the Radical practice. The repre-
sentatives of the people in Congress,
devote ten hours to maturing measures
for the exclusive benefit of the negro,
where they occupy one for the sole ad'
vantage of the white. The national
expenditures so far as they relate to the
Government of the South, are incurred
in the negro interest, without reference
to the resident whites. The distrlbu-
tion of public patronage and employ
ment in that sectiOa is largely in favor
of the black. Laws are made for him
armies are kept up for him, millions OF
taxes arc gathered for him, schools and
churches are built and supported for
his mental and spiritual development,
and under the beuefcenco Of thatigrcat
national poorhouse, the Freedmen's
Bureau, che tolls not, neither does he
spin, n,"and yet his indolent ease is to
him more royal than the glories of Sol
ONION.
A pointed illustration is furnished us
in West Virginia. In Union, Monroe
county, the "loyap commissioners OF
education, have dispensed entirely with
a school for white children and have
purchased and fitted up splendid hall
in the Masonic building at that place
for the sole accommodation OF the
negroes. Awhile professor Is employed,
at a liberal salary. for the instruction OF
these blacks, while the white youth OF
the town are entirely unprovided for by
the public fund. They derive not a dimes
benefit from the school taxes which
their own fathers pay. They are COM
PEELED to provide out of scanty private
means, the school and teacher which the
State agrees to furnish when she takes
their taxes. Impoverished as these
people are, the tax gatherer leaves
them but little to expend for other pur-
poses than that of bare subsistence.
Hence it is that their school house is OF
the poorest, and its appointments of the
meanest, description. Their town
presents the extraordinary spectacle OF
a crowded negro eeschool in splen-
did hall on the main street, while be-
hind it, ON q back street, in poor,
tumble-down hovel, is a struggling
white pay school," the only estab-
lishment in the place for the instruc-
ton of white children.
(. A more shameful petty infamy can
.csrcsly be imagined. Neither the laws
NOR the public sentiment of the State
can tolerate it. 1t is q villainous robbery
of tho white people of Monroe county
for the benefit of the blacks, and neither
political nor any other considerations
can Justify it. Itdoesn't matter straw
y
if the people thus robbed have been
rebels of the most intense kind. They
arc not therefore to be made the mark
ed victims of an injustice that at once
plumbers and disgraces them.
The "leyap proscriptionists OF this
State have been robbing and persecu'
ting about long enough, under the vii
lainous excuse, that their victims were
"rebels." No matter what they may be
it does not Justify the public authorities
in becoming barbarians. Such treat
ment would make mutinous the most
law abiding people in the world. The
only wonder is that the citizens OF Mon
roe county have not long ago declared
that school taxes paid by white meu
must educate white children, and that
if their sons and daughters cannot be
benefited by fund which white labor
creates, black children should not, and
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