New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1872-02-23
BLOWING HOT AND COLD.

BLOWING HOT AND COLD.
For the purpose. probably, OF temper
ing the severity of its censures Of the Com
mittee of Fifty-one, the Times administers
a little faint praise. That remarkably &C.
centric exponent of opinion finds some
thing commendable in the proposed city
funding bill, which it characterizes as the
production of practical men. This creates
the suspicion in our mind that the eulogist
is not practical man. For we have not
had it explained to us by the committee,
the Times, nor any one else, how man can
carry himself by his own boot-tops, and
thus save car fare. And yet this is, in our
Judgment, quite as practical as the pro-
posed plan of relief for the city. We
showed the main features Of the project
yesterday morning-how it is proposed
to change the whole debt of the city into
bonds bearing a uniform rate Of in
terest - seven per cent. This can only be
done by exchanging the new bonds for the
old ones, either directly or by selling the
one and buying the other. The new bonds
will command certain price in the money
market, which the city can neither increase
nor diminish, while the old ones can only
be redeemed at par OF purchased in the
market before maturity. In the latter
event the holder will be party to the
o-,I 70 no
gets his price, whatever it may be. The
city bonds can not be called in at will like
the United States fiye-twenties: the bond
holders can demand and receive the full
amount of interest the coupons call for.
And until the assessment rolls show mate
rial increase in the value of property the
two per cent tax will be inadequate to pay
81, 400, 900 annual interest, 100000 of the
principal, and defray the current expenses of
the government. The plan, then, SO highly
extolled, is failure because it provides
for yearly deficit of more than quarter
of million dollars. The fact that the
House committee to which the bill has
been referred has since proposed such
changes as materially relieve it from its
Objectionable features can not be placed
to the credit of the so-called ''practlcal'
men. There is, we believe, a fair pros
pect that it will be licked into such shape
as to render its final passage desirable.
The Times is no less at fault in some OF
IL
censured because it could not find
proofs to sustain the ISLANDERS that
have been manufactured by par
tisan newspapers against city and State
officials for political purposes. The ste
reotyped charge is reiterated: 1T is we'll
known that both city and State have been
plundered of large amounts Of money
through the corruption or malfeasance Of
their officials
The truth is that nothing of the kind is
we'll known or known at all. For it is as
much the duty of the Times as it is Of the
Committee of Fifty-one, or any other vol
unteer unofficial, to make complaints
against we'll known offenders against the
criminal laws. And the fact that the
committee has some half dozen lawyers
among its members probably saved that
rather harmless body from making itself
as absurd as the Times. Evidently what
the journal declares to be well known to
it was not known at all to the committee
OF its friends and advisers.
Again: The Coleman case is dressed up
in new garb and held up to the COM
mittee as something requiring its action:
In a case decided by the Supreme Court
Oh Monday last, the bar and audience were
startled by the strong language of the
court, denouncing certain transaction IN
which city officials were implicated as an
unparalleled fraud and swindle. Stronger
language never emanated from Judge of
that high tribunal than that used By Justice
WHY.
In this case the strong language that so
startled the bar and the audience was
not that of the court, but was used in
dissenting opinion by Dir. Justice WHY.
The Court rendered an opinion of its own,
in which legal reasons were given for the
Judgment for the plaintiff. In these cases
it is much safer to accept the deliberate
Judgment Of impartial men than to catch
at the ill-tempered, unsupported, and, not
unfrequently, erroneous charges of polit-
ical partisans. We think the committee
acted wisely in refusing to institute prose
cutions against Messrs. Prados, Pember-
ton, Labarre, Coleman & Co., and the Su-
preme Court, because it has never been
demonstrated to the unbiased mind that
the claim of Coleman & Co. was an ''un-
paralleled fraud and a swindle."
Were the committee to engage in all the
wild expeditions suggested by the Times,
they would have usurped nearly all the
functions Of the public prosecutors, in
Guiding the grand jury This is not the
duty they were appointed to perform.
THE APOSTLES.
The Times says eff the tiftyone apostles
of reform who are to be implicitly followed