The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1871-08-04
Marietta, Georgia, Friday Morning. August 4

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the Treasury, a large portion il
squandered by Congress on party
favorites or corrupt rings, and or
base combinations of corrupt plum.
derers. The enormous extent tc
which this financial corruption has
been carried will become manifest
to any one who compares the eX'
penditures of the Government dur,
ing the six years which followed the
civil war. Both were periods o
peace, and there can be no excuse
! for more than a small increase cor,
responding to the ratio in which the
population has advanced. But
where the ordinary expenditures for
the fiscal year ending June /, 1870,
exclusive of Indian annuities, pen
sions, and interest onthe public debt,
were Sl4S, $685. -, for the years
ending June |, 1860, the eXpendi-
lures for the same purpose were but
S55,9l8,lSS -. Here is shown the
difference between the ordinary cost
of carrying on our Government
when its agents are honest, and the
cost of the same thing when its Off
GERS are so destitute of moral princi-
pie as to disregard all legal lmita-
tions upon their own authority
A free, unperverted representative
government is simple in its machin-
cry, easily maintained, and "dis-
penses its blessings like the dews of
Heaven, unseen and unfelt, save in
the beauty and freshness they con-
tribute to produce; the secure tran
guilty of a regal establishment may
sometimes be compensation for the
burdens it imposes, but a rotten Re-
public is at once the most costly,
the most oppressive, and the most
unsteady of all political structures.
To support the extravagant cor
ruptions of an administration like
the present, and at the same time
pay the pensions and the interest on
the debt, would require heavy taxa
ton at best. But the party in pow
er has contrived to make the taxes
doubly burdensomo by their mode of
levying and collecting them. Great
gans Of unnecessary officers are sup
ported and fattened out of them
They are in many cases imposed,
not with any view to the supply Of
the Treasury, but solely to operate
as bounties for the benefit of indi-
vidual and private corporations
While the mouth of labor is thus
robbed of the bread it earns, the
fortunes of monopolists and ringmas-
tiers are hideously swelled, and their
rapacity inAamed for still furtherag-
erosion upon the rights of the in
dustrious masses. The necessity OF
revenue reform is admitted on all
hands, and by none more freely
than by candid supporters Of the So
called Republican party in Congress,
but the majority is so completely
controlled by private interests thai
considerations of public duty have
no influence upon them.
No people can be wholly enslavcd
so long as they receive the protec-
ton of an Independent and upright
Judiciary. The Radical party,
feeling this, have tried by all means,
fair and foul, to make the Federal
Judiciary an instrument to aid them
in their crusade against the law of
the land. They have filled the in
ferior courts, especially in the South,
with their most unscrupulous parti-
sans, Again and again they have
constructed and reconstructed the
Supreme Court-sometimes reduc-
ing, and sometimes by increasing
the number of judges. always with a
view to make a majority which could
be relied on to endorse their anti
Constitutional legislation. When
the judgments of that august tribu-
nal sustained the ancient principles
of liberty and justice, its authority
was denounced, disobeyed, and con
temned. They have interposed il
a pending case with legislative de
crees to take away the jurisdiction
of the court, and prevent it iron
protecting citizen whose PLANES
right they desired to invade. w
solemnly trust that they have no
yet succeeded, and will never sue
coed in bending the court of last re
sort to their foul purpose.
Their so-called reconstruction
laws are a series of experiments 70
the reduction of the Southern State
to the lowest condition of politica
slavery, hoping thereby to max
them instruments for the enslave
ment Of every other section. IL
this end, they have not only refused
a representation in Congress, bu
forced them to be misrepresented by
persons who came there to get op
pressive laws enacted against them
They have steadily struggled t.
make the State governments thC
tools of ther partisan tyranny
Wherever they have fully succeed
ed they have debauched the admin
istration of justice, disregarded the
popular will, and produced the mos
frightful disorders. Scalawags, car
pet-baggers, and the most ignorant
Of the negro population, welter to.
0athar in one mass of moral putre