Rapides gazette. (Alexandria, La.) 1869-187?, 1873-05-10
Chapter from Roundabout.

A good many little country papers, in
apparent ignorance of what has tran.pired
within the last month, are full full of cheap
eic;.ciIce about tax-resisting associations.
They appear not TO have heard that certain
prominent business houses in this city,
having been brought squarly to the issue.
paid up rather tamely and with total alb
sence of the dramatic flourish confidently
expected by an anxious public. They seem
TO be ignorant that Mr.. Booth, the only
man who consistently backed up his honest
convictions, was compelled by injunction,
imprisonment and in stress of completes de
sertion by his once ferocious allies, to set
tie his bill to the Kellogg government.
They show tendency to ignore the fact
that FIVE or six score of Metropolitan Police
have made incursions into one or two dis
orderly parishes, aud been received with
perfect gush of welcome and obedience.
They overlook all these suggestive facts.
They turn a blind eye = the circumstance
that all this fustfssJl and braggadocio has
crumbled at touch Of force. and they per-
sist in harping ON the old exploded theories
with stupidity thar is truly inspired.
Now, Roundabout hopes he is understood
by this time as being thorough opponent
of the scratch government with which
Louisiana is just now burdened. As mat
ter of business, certain parties still pretend
to think otherwise /: but that is all under
stood in the trade and goes for very little.
No one who has read this column with one
spark of intelligence, or who is not direct
| ly interested in misrepresenting it to tho
public, can for a moment urge that it is
conducted otherwise than for the welfare
of the respectable populatiOn-not the sol
disant respectable, but the property hold
ers. the business and the industrial classes.
Without ever counseling the payment of
taxes to the State, Roundabout has studi-
ously refrained from endorsing any of the
have-brained schemes of resistance which
have been advanced with such remarkable
assurance.
| He felt pretty sure that the very apos-
| ties of those schemes would subside at the
faintest approach of pecuniary loss, and he
believed honestly that nothing but disap-
| pOintment would result in any event. 1t
turns out he was right. Explain it as yOn
may, this legal resistance business has col
| lapsed. All the eloquence, all the caucus
play, all the resolutiOn-reading, and indig-
nation meeting, all the pow-wows, the war
talk, and political kettle-drums have dis
solved into meek acguiescence. OF course
it may be urged that this is under protest
and because we can't help ourselves, but
what of thati 1t is done, and the occa-
sional moral essays from Northern papers
dished up by a respected contemporary,
don't change the situation one particle.
Perhaps some one wants to revive that
feeble superstition as to the next session
of Congress Hardly. Those thirty-nint
dollars in postage must be looked on as ut
terly squandered, and the forging of thos.
'thnnderbolts" thrown up by the origina
contractors. The fiummery is lifting like
q fog. and men are beginning to say thai
relief must be by our own efforts towards
rational end by the abandoning of decay
ed traditions and incompetent leaders, ant
by frank, rnreseryed relinquishment o
the untenable and suicidal policy we hav'
been pursuing toward a race whose dis
trust of us is to-day the only cause of on
misfortunes.