New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1872-06-01
mup nrTTT op THE BOURBONs.

ticulars. Now let us state the points a.
thew occur to us. And first, it is just al
well to begin by recOunting what the
Bourbons assume to be the conditions O
the country We are heavily taxed; W.
are ruled by incompetent men; we art
divided into parties upon questions of race
and color when we should be divided
upon principles and ideas; we are op
pressed by special legislation; the public
revenues are spent wickedly and IMPROVE
IDENTIFY. Admitting all these charges to be
true, who is responsible for these evils
In the first place, the government of the
State is; but who is responsible for the
government of the State? In accounting
for evil the original, and not the imme-
diate, cause must be ascertained; and in
! hunting for the blame Of the mismanage-
ment and wickedness. that prevails in our
local government we must go to the root
! of the matter.
Where did the wrong commence? Who
is in the wrong to-day? When the con-
test of 1868 for State offices was set on
foot, the Bourbon organs first advised the
people not to have anything to do with it.,
as the whole thing was unconstitutional
and utterly worthless. They declared that
the Presidential election would upset the
entire work of reconstruction and reverse
the then existing order of the federal gov
eminent They were told that this was
madness, and yet they persisted. The
consequence was that thousands of people
refused to vote, and the Republicans car
ned the State by an overwhelming ma
jority, according to the count of General
Hancock, who was not friendly to them.
Noo0 they admit that they played the fool
then.
When it was proposed to give the col
ored people the right to vote the Bourbon
organs advised their friends to resist,
which they did, even to the killing of
scores of the negroes and large number Of
white people and they kept up that folly
for three years. That set the colored pop
ulation against the whites, and the setting
has never been washed out N01o they
admit that they were fools then, and the
same organs that made the mischief are
pleading and begging for the support of
the race they swore they would never
recognize in any shape.
These two great mistakes, that none but
the veriest dolts would have committed,
constitute the beginning and the continu-
ing cause of the evils that the Bourbons
charge to be in existence in Louisiana to-
day. If the white people had taken the
same stand five years ago which they have
taken recently, there would have been no
division of politics upon mere matters of
race and color, better men would have
been elected to Office, and the blame of
our present condition would have been
less than it is, or it would have been
fixed upon white and black alike.
If the Bourbon organs were wickedly in
competent in 1868, they are equally SO to-
day. While they have been forced to ad-
vance unto a higher platform, they have
brought with them their vapid pfolixity of
language, their utter lack of common sense.
and their egotistical presumption. They
possess no more capacity to be of service
in the councils of the country than they do
in cotton field Their mental calibre is
as thoroughly pauperized as their physical
ability. When they are not Sarah Camps
they are nothing.
Governor Warmoth has made a better
officer than the Bourbons could have fur
nished if all of them had been boiled down
into an executive officer He has protected
the State from his own partisans as well
as from his enemies. He has opened the
door to a complete reconciliation between
the better portion of the white people and
the better portion of the black people, and
the Bourbons have stood in the passage
way beating back the hostile elements that
seemed to be bent upon afiliating for their
common good. Governor Warmoth has
beaten back the meanest and most rapa-
cious section of the Republican party, and
has sought to combine the virtuous and
intelligent colored people in a common
with the virtuous and INTEL
ligent portion of the white people. But
he has been met with vindictive enmity at
every step he made in seeking to unity the
races of the State as they ought to be
united If we are to live forever with a
negro party and a white mans party, the
State had better come to the auction block
at once, for to that it will come at last.
If we are not to live this way; if we are
to admit that all men are equally entitled
to the same political rights, whereby the
State may act upon common principle
and for a common purpose; if we are to
90 forward instead of going backward,
the people must put away from them the
organs that make mistakes one day
and crawl out of them the next. We
want to be governed and directed by some
thing real and genuine, not by weather
cocks. Reasonable men can not start in
one direction to-day and go back to-mor-
row. 1t breaks their spirits and dispels
their energies to be backing and filling
like pack Of fools.
QUACKBRY IN POLITICS.
Advice is plenty; wisdom scarce. A !
multitude Of hernits have unearthed |