Herald and tribune. [volume] (Jonesborough, Tenn.) 1869-current, 1871-05-25
QUO WARRANTO.

ONcL tnc way uauDIiuS Iuc misuOIncr
Tennessee Patriot" last week vomited a
huge cloud of densest smoke and a small
thread of harmless lava. The righteous
indignation, was there, but had not sufi-
cient motive power to force its way
through clumsy diction and finty rhetoric.
However, the "holy horror of the edi-
tor was not SO intensified by Republican
enormities as to completely throw his
mind into a middle, and he had the ade-
quate foresight and selfpossession to ex-
press the desire that Republican cotempor-
aries tell him, "why all this commotion in
and about the temple" Anticipating
the nature of the answer, he asks: do
you say that the people shall not say who
shall be their magistrates in this county"
The radical course and speeches of this
impatient interrogator in '65 and &c re-
ply most emphatically that the rebel
portion ofour people should have no sag
in the selection of officers magistrates in
cluded, we suppose) and even that rebels
should not be allowed to hold Office. As
suited to the graceful balance of his
phrase, be, in substance, says that the
rebels and conservatives of to-day were
the good Union men during the war, ma
nysRepublicans that be knows were in
the rebel army, not fighting, bat plumber
ing and differing honest people, almost
to the same extent of your ''bright and
shining .'rebel Republica leaders have
been doing of late We know of no
such men in our ranks, but could name a
considerable number who fought or pre-
tended to fight or both sides during the
war, and may haze miLcd up cOnsiderd-
Die pl.aadering and piyering in their os-
citations from one army to the other.
But "why all this commotion" and stir
ring up ofthe ''Quo Warranto' gentlemen?
Tits just this. 1t is one of the p~lainest
laws of our land, a part and parcel of the
Constitution, that no man who held any
office before the war, and engaged in or
gave indirect aid and sympathy to the
rebellion shall be eligible to Office. This
enactment, engrafted upon the Constitu-
ton, is as decisive as the settlement of the
war, in the surrender of the confederate
armies. Yet in defiance of this law, dis
qualified men have been elected and are
now holding Office and to punish their
arrogance and self-incurred and self-sought
crirOinality is the cause of "all this
commotion in and about the temple -
Does this satisfy our squirting, foaming,
frothing n~eighbor? In entering the jour-
nalistic field. the Patriot exhibits afresh-
ness as ludierous and amusing as the aw-
kard and unsophisticated back wood man,
who visits the town for the first time, star
ing signs off of their fastenings and panes
ofshop windows into fragmentary ruins.
We are pleased to grace the conclusion
of our reply with an unprecedented out
burst of grandiloquence, exposing to our
cnraptured vision the fathomless depths
and the heights Qost in azure) of our
neighbours erudition. In classical round
ness, profundity and grandeur of concer-
tion, richness and beauty of diction, terri
bic intensity of idea and especially "sub-
Unity of metaphor, it ''bangs bobtail'
takes the ~dilapidated linen off of the bush
and pals the expressions of all ancient and
modern writer's. We acknowledge that
were thrown into o spasm of blissful OBJ
livion and ravishing noncntity, and propose
to administer, this ETHEREAL gas to our
numerous readers hoping a similar result.
The Patriot says, parenthesis our own.
ave propose to state facts, and never in
tend to misrepresent any one knowingly,
but if we were to 60 back to the murder of
Abel Ton one of Ralaam's asses is to be
understood) and travel along down (it
would be a nice trip too, plenty of still
houses on the road) through all the crimi-
nal and abominable scenes that have been
enacted from that day to this Democratic
Ku Kluxism to be included) and it were
in our power to concentrate them lit
woulden't be much of an effort for our
nsighbor,) into one solid mass of corrup-
ton, they would be, to the excuses, ha-
tired and blood-thirsty actions of the rebel
republican party, about in the same pro-
portion as a "j~une-bug to a duck"
Hallelugurem