Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1871-12-08
MISSOURI.
Browns Message-The Oppression of
Federal Taxation


ST. LOUIS, Dec. Gov. Browns mes
sage was read in the Legislature to-day.
Some of its principal features, not already
mentioned, are as follows: He thinks the
most effective remedy for corruption and
incapacity in Office is limitation of Execu-
tive appointments to cases of emergency,
and elections to the people. He says the
great incubus now resting on the people of
Missouri is found in the taxes and duties,
direct and indirect, levied by the United
States. They amount to much more an
nually than all our other taxes put together.
Yet they do not go into the national treas
ury, but are spent largely in collection, or
are put in the pockets of favored classes.
Liberalism.
The Governor discusses the national DO
litical situation at great length. After re-
verting to the material welfare of the State
and congratulating the people on its pros
perity, he says it is equally a source of con-
graduation that its political influence has
been signally enhanced by the wise course
of Cancellation so emphatically initiated by
our election. The advent of liberalism to
the administration of the State has recon-
ciled the resentments of the war, confirmed
absolute freedom to all, evolved anew the
principle of self-government acting through
local organizations, established purer civil
service instead of that compelled by the
slavish ways of pqrtisanship and melted the
youthful energies of a new generation to
compass the great destinies of the future
rather than rehabilitate itself in the dead is
sues of the past.
The Liberals the Genuine Republican
Party.
He then enumerates what Liberalism has
done and draws lengthy distinction be-
tween the Republican idea and the idea
which he says has been foisted on the Rep
ublican party.
In the discussion Of this distinction he
makes a powerful arraignment of the ad-
ministration party and policy as a perver-
sion of Republican ideas and high treason
to Republican principles. One of his clos
ing paragraphs is as follows:
"The attempt to establish by force of mar
tial law civil society that would accord
with the superior government never has
been and never will be a success. At
present it is not a success in the South. In
the past it was not success in the North,
and the teachings of 1776 illuminated the
failure of cetury later. There is latent in
the reconstructed States as elsewhere
throughout the Union, much of that senti-
ment which finds expression in de-
votion to local freedom, a
sentiment exaggerated into wrongful
secession under the plant passion of the
slavery controversy, but one which in the
absence of slavery may be channelled back
to the surest safeguard for the equal free
dom of all. 1t is in maintaining the ger
minal points from which the growth of free
opinion starts in preserving form, through
which it passes into political life, and re-
speeding the distributions of duty it i'm
poses and constitutionalism has created,
that security will be found for all who are
cOmmingled in such society as ours. 1t is
partly because this is assailed and sought to
be supplanted by outward force alone that so
little advance has been made by the
Government in its ostensible reconciliation
The same result would follow in other
States on any other question thus engend-
cred, and it is worthy of note, by Republi-
cans as well as Democrats, that every party
which has passed from power since the
foundation of the Government, has lost the
confidence of the people, because of an at
tempt unduly to exalt the national above all
local freedoms, and to strain the national
power to ends for which it was never de-
signed, by method repulsive to the COM
mon thought and present will"