The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-08-21
Law and Order in WashingtOn.

From the ~. Y World.
If arithmetic We're not seditious science,
and sight disloil sense, We should have
hopes OF converting even the Tribune from the
error of its ways. The letter We print to-day
from Washington shows us how communities
prosper which are under the control of the
race which it is proposed to equalize with the
free white men of the North, and to exalt above
the free white men of the South. Negro legis-
lation has been tried on small scale at the
national capital, and the consequence is that
every department of the municipal govern
ment there is in scandalous condition. The
street lamps are left unlit, the fires which are
set going by the carelessness of negroes in
kitchens, are left to burn at their own sweet
will by the carelessness of negroes in engine
houses; no ready money is forthcoming to
meet the daily expenses even of the schools
and the police, and criminals are left at large,
unless they happen to be traitors to moral
ideas, as we'll as TO the social order. We are
assured that a weeks sojourn in that town
would suffice to show, to any person fit to be
without the walls of an idiot asylum, the i'm
possibility of any department of things being
even tolerably conducted which is put under
control of the man and brother who is there
held in check by the numerical predominance
of the white race, but who, in some of the
Southern States under the new order of things
that the party which plumes Itself upon being
party OF progress proposes to establish
there, is altogether unchecked.
II these things are done in the green tree
what may we not expect to be done in the dry
Luckily we are not left to analogy or to fancy to
discover. The other day we published letter
from Hayti, where the experiment of the colored
mans capacity for selfgovernment has been
tried for many years, and under auspices more
favorable than can be hoped for it elsewhere.
Washington is the blade, Savannah the ear,
but for the full corn in the ear we must 90 to
Port -au- Prince. There the policeman no
longer keeps up pretense of existing as
copservator OF public order, but his
ostensible function, as in Washington his real
one appears to be, is that of a vent
for public moneys. In name, as in fact, the
nasty squabble between the two hordes of
blacks who are now carrying on what they
call revolution in that unhappy island, is a
squabble for the funds which are spent upon
the establishments of the Baron GrOg and the
Duke of Lemonade. Macauay has said that
TO Judge of party we must take, not its pro-
fessiOns when it is in opposition, but its prao-
when it is the qualifications of a race that are
the subject of discussion. 1t is a much more
passable gulf which separates Washington
nom Port au-P Prince than that which divides
the Washington OF ten years ago from the
Washington Of to-day, or the Washington of
to-day from what may be the New York of ten
! years hence, unless sanity shall revisit the
! minds Of men, and the crazy 'reconstructiOn"
! legislation of the last three years be so moli-
fed as TO give the control OF Southern politics
! and Southern society to the best elements in
| ii, instead Of the very worst.