The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1873-09-20
The Frog EmbrOgliO.

To the Editor Of the Press:
Every friend of law and order must have been
gratified with your editorial condemnation of
so gross an outrage public decency as the
selection of so notorious desperadoes, NelSe
Leighton and his associates in crime, for ex-
temporaneous defenders of a railroad in
squabbie with rival. Everybody in Portland
or who has read Portland papers, is familiar
with the desperate, dangerous and abandoned
character of Leighton who jauntily testified in
the Superior Court yesterday that he is DOW
in the employment of the Boston q Maine
Railroad, watching an uneasy frog and the
men who put such character in position to
encourage him TO deeds of violence, for which
he has sufficient natural tendency, should be
beld to strict accountability to the public.
Bnt maintain that the whole sqnabbe is
unseemly and disgusting, tending directly to
lehauch and demoraze the public conscience
aud to degrade the tone of public morals by
famliarizing the most ignorant, brutal and
dangerously excitable class of our population
with scenes of violence and disorder, and is
thus manifestly calculated to endanger the gen.
eral peace and safety. Much has been said
about the lingering aud far reaching evil effects
of the civil war, in letting loose upon society
men of low instincts, trained to deeds of vio-
lence and blood in the army, and thus ready for
robbery, crime and murder when tempted And
yet, here among us, an evening school has been
opened. where gangs of our most ignorant and
excitable population, many OF them foreign
ers, are receiving nightly lessons in the use of
weapons, and taught to realize their own
strength and the mighty power of an armed
mob, concentrated upon one object. Can more
hazardous experiment be ventured upon at
time when the tendency to anarchy and vio-
lence is so extreme as to overturn the sembance
of law and order in whole nations, to bring q
reign of terror close to large part of the Unit
ed States and to multiply crime beyond all for
mer precedent in on own State?
l was a spectator of the doings OF Wednesday
nVanipo nj Commercial q nd n m iu6o-
ment the events OF that night have sown the
seeds of many riots, crimes and perhaps muir
ders, by making lawlessness respectable in the
eyes of our most dangerous class. Providen-
TALLY, we have thus far been preserved from
any actual collision between the retainers of
three different roads, which like the lordly and
insoent barons of feudal times seem to defy
the law and the sovereign and demand neutral
ity from the lawful authorities of the land while
they prepare to fight out their own quarrels
with their own armed servants and rascals.-
But there is 10 security that actual conflict and
boodshed may not at any time occur between
the ignorant and excited DULLES or workmen of
the different factions and when this happens
we may be prepared for the speedy advent of
an era like that when the champions of the red
and the blue Delayed the race course at Con-
stantinople or when the church of st. Sophia
flowed with the blood Of Homoonsian and
Homoousian priests.
Let but the first drop of blood be spilled by
Leighton or any other Captain of the host in
this railroad war and who can estimate the
magnitude of the consequences? Who can set
rounds to the ferocity of opposing gangs of
infurated foreigners, who can guaranty the citi-
zens against midnight assaults and arson,or the
travelling public against obstructed tracks and
misplaced switches.
The writer has long believed that corporate
insolence and INSTRUMENTATION will eventually
arouse the people to contiscate all the railroads
to the State, paying the owners far price for
their property, and he appeals to the present
condition Of affairs in this city one of the
times pointing to the rapid approach of that re-
suit G. w. G..