New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1872-01-23
OUR M1sFoRTuNEs AND THEIR AUTHORS.

AS the mad attempt to revolutionize the
State government of Louisiana after the
fashion of Mexico has failed, the people OF
New Orleans will now have ample time to
consider the matter of expense: for the
money which the State will have to pay is
only small part of the outlay that the COM
munity will be called upon to lose. Trade
disordered, customers frightened away,
uncertainty attached to public affairs, con-
fdence demoralzed, politics degraded,
every general interest injured, all these
losses must be borne by the people in
their united capacity. The great tidal
wave that threatened the Sandwich
Islands was felt on the shores
of Mexico in eight hours. A wisp of wind
that whirls handful of sand III Arabia,
sweeps forward until it buries caravan
under its accumulated force in the deserts
Sahara. A fire started by the kick of a
COW lays a city in ruins A pustule on the
face of sick man spreads the contagious
smallpox until an army melts away from
before the capital it had almost won. These
are the fearful effects of disorder. And
since we have been visited by this dread
full plague, and have allowed our passions
and prejudices to accept of it as an agency
of relief, the expense must fall upon us in
the shape of great public ndprivate losses.
This is lamentable, but it is true. The
trade which has been driven away is gone
for this season beyond doubt, and the
merchants and business men who expected
it must be content to wait still longer for
their reward Houses will stand empty
yet another year Rents will go hard with
the unemployed tenant, and shop-keepers
will find their customers buying less than
ever, for the means to buy has failed with
the absence of trade
This condition of affairs has been fore
told to the people Of New Orleans in these
columns day after day. We have long
known that the men who marched their
armed hirelings on to Canal street yester-
day, terrifying the community by their
threats of war and violence, We're des-
perate crew, whose schemes We're worth
fight to win. The evidences of their dis
honesty, or rather that Of their leaders,
have been published far and wide, and yet
the community seemed to look with passive
at the movement which threat
ened the State government with subver-
sion, and which actually constrained it to
close its own doors against its own custom
ers in the interest of this corrupt and dis
orderly combination of political charlatans.
Now pay day is at hand. We are at the
end of the revolution, but We have hardly
entered on the settlement that we must
surely make. Having accepted Of dis
order, We must do as all men do who vio-
late the law, liquidate the bill Of costs.
This will be presented to rs in thousand
ways Every man will meet the collector
everywhere. In the stagnation Of bust
ness the capitalist will fail to reap the ben
eft of his investment: in the loss of trade
the mechanic will meet with but few en-
gagements, for men who do not earn an
income can neither build nor improve: the
leyee will feel the effects in lighter ship
ments, and herein the draymen and the
stevedores will pay their share of the debt
by the absence of labor; landlords will
feel it in the flight of tenants from a COM
munity stricken with confusion and I'M
certainty; theatres will pay their quota by
losing the strangers who would have WIS.,
tied the city but for the trouble with which
it was afflicted: and even the brigade Of
loaters that swelled the army Of the ''re-
formers will suffer because the liberality
that kept up the free lunches and helped
the pockets Of poverty will not be here to
do its part We shall be too poor to do
anything this winter and next summer,
except to curse our misfortunes. And
since these were purely of our own beget-
ting, we shall have time to repent Of our
own errors while abusing their effects upon
ourselves.
If the Times and Bee can draw any con-
ISOLATION from the injuries which they have
assisted to create, it is to be hoped they
will divide with their victims, who have
have been so easy to mislead.