American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1872-04-20
"Ths Outgoing Board "-Once More.

Our s.mOst potent, grave and rev
erend" senior Of the Matt, in his las
issue, labOIed through half col
umn of his " mammo h" weekly, II
an article without head and attenu
ated body, i'll IL dolorOus, lugubriou.
complaint, that somebody had at
tempted to make it appear that hi!
hebdomidal had opposed the re-clcc
ton of the present Board OF Alder
men, on the I'd of April. We read hi,
article half through querying all thu
while, s. what in the ID is he driv
ing at 7" when, all at once, we began
to :. see it, We were the maui OuI
neighbOr was after with his :. shar,
stick Among several short arti
cles written by us in favor or the re
election of the present Board of AL
dermen, was one headad . The out
going Board." How that happened
was in this wiSt: On our return
home from a week absence on bust
ness, we learned, somewhat to our
surprise, that there was strong op-
position to the Board of Aldermen
then in Of1ice-that a ticket had
been fully agreed upon, composed
of two scalawags, two carpetbag
gers and two neGroeS---that the
Opposition was fully organized and
hard at work, and by making
4 combined assault of all these
elements-aS was done on a certain
well known occasion, i'll the not very
remote past-they would succeed in
carrying the Malakoff, and defeating
our " Citizens Ticket" Wherever
we went we heard the Council
spoken of as "The Outgoing Board"
This seemed to be the chosen catch
wOrd-the slogan-Of the enemy
Hearing this phrase everywhere OH
the streets, we naturally headed one
OF the articles with the prevailing
phrase. We asked, why thus de-
why thus characterize the
Board Was it a fOreSOne cOnclu-
sion that they were to go out and
if so, why sol 1t now turns out, by
his own confession, it would seem,
that our neishbor was the unfOrtun-
ate originator OF that unhappy eX-
preston, but very expressive " adj
jective," Ca thing of which we were
ignorant, for we were absent at the
time, and never have seen the article
up to this moment.) The expression
was certainly an inappropriate one,
if he was, as he says, (''and Brutus
is au honorable. man." all the time
the warm friend OF the Board, and
did MT want them to "OutgO," at
all!
And SO, when he saw our arti-
Gle headed with his adjective y
not knowing that we had never seen
OF read it he imagined us pointing
at him . with the slow, unmOving
finger of" reprOachful accusation,
and fancied us, saying unto him,
as Nathan said unto David, verify,
thou art the man
We deny the "soft impeachment"
and your labored defence-if you
had us in your minds eye is "much
ado about nothing"
The wicked flee when no man
pursueth and SO on, to the end OF
Proverbs.
The implied charge that we praise
and commend, indiscriminately, d" in
season and out Of season." is with
out foundation. We commend only
where we think commendatiOn is
due. There is one kind of g com
mendatiOn we do not deal III it is
the most Objectionable of all kinds
-" damning your friends with faint
praise" The Mail gave as a small
specimen of this when our present
Board first went into office. They
were men Of judgment, sense, dis
creiion, and all that but everything
they did at their first meeting was
1t was wrong to have re-
duced the MayOr'c salary; it was
wrong to have cut down the Mar
shars salary; it was wrong to dis
miss the police. 1t was right to
but they should MT have
in that way. LOp off
else. For Gods sake,7
said Eng, restore 'Chang's sal
airy, at all events" In short, the
Nail intimated to the new Board,
. you had better Ego slow ; You are
new in office, and might go too far
might &c over your depth"
But we are saying much more
than we intended. We must close.
We came very near not noticing the
matter at all; but there are some
persons who presume upon fOrbear-
ance and silence.
The inSinuation that our COM