The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-06-20
FRIDAY EVENING. JUNE 20, 1879
No More Such Folly.

The little meeting which somebody
caled-nobody knows who-out on Gam
ble's Hill few evenings since, to decide
"the fate and destiny of empire, " has
attracted no small attention from the Con.
sentative press of the city, and the amount
of Bohemian erudition expended over it
and about it, to say nothing of the editorial
exegesis and comment, would have been
quite amazing had it not been extremely
ridiculous. How the meeting happened to
happen whether it came up from the flour
ish of some magican's wand, out Of the
bowels of the too restless and uneasy earth,
or dropped out of that sublime hole in the
sky from which larks are said to fall, CT
from which it sometimes rains frogs, after
the fashion of lice in Egypt, we have had
no precise means OF knowing. But hap
pen it did, and big with the fate and desti-
ny Of passing events, it no doubt acas. A
vast deal of eloquence was expended on the
occasion, and string of stirring resolutions
was passed as long as the moral law and as
lively as piece of skippered cheese.
The grand onus of complaint was, that
somebody had got federal office, and
somebody else had not-that the wrong
man was IN and the right man was out,
looking at the matter from the standpoint
of the two or three hundred persons, ont
of forty millions in this great Republic,
constituting the meeting. This outrage
Gus state of things was not to be tolerated
for a moment by the eagles of liberty.
It would have blocked the streets of
"Rome's proud EMPIRE" even in old
Antoninus' day, if it had not pro-
duced mightier cachination than the side
shaking proclvities Of that ancient city
could possibly have withstood. We can
imagine old Autoninus, after his victorious
march in the East, in which he had over
come stupendous rebellion, returning tc
Mount Alba to greet the Empress and
receive an ovation from the Roman senate
interrupted in the grand ceremonial by c
delegation from the Quirinal, demanding
that one inspector of Roman pump-handlc'
should have his official head Topped oil, an'
another inspector, or rather ex-inspector
should have his clapped on! We say, w
can imagine this, and can even imagine
benign smile lighting up the face Of th'
amiable Emperor as he sat reading over
string of resolutions as long as the Pan
dects; but how terribly had such delega
ton of nincompoops been lampooned by
the satirists of that day
And yet we do not see that the thing
would have been any more absurd in the cast
Of inspectors Of Roman pump-handles thar
in that of inspectors of American tobacco
We are sorry to see our colorec
people, who are generally well-meaning
and well-behaved citizens, led into doing The
many foolish things which fill whole col
nmns of the Conservative newspapers
ostensibly to tickle them with a straw
but really mercilessly to lampoon then
for what every man Of sense understand
to be piece of absurd folly. The Repub
lican party has its central and ward com
mittees in every city in the United States
and no party meeting can be called with
out their united consent and united action
But in the case of the meeting referred tt
somebody who had no more business Il
call a meeting of the party than we hay,
to call council of the Great Moguls, wen
around to Tom, Dick and Harry ane
said, +" We are going to have a big meeting
on CANDLES Hill this evening come W
and help squelch things!" In this way. ant
without any authorized public notice t.
anybody, this great squelching meeting was
got together, ostensibly to do big thing
but really to bring the colored people o
the city into ridicule and contempt. W.
hope to see no more of this folly. There
is but one way for the Republican party o
Richmond to speak, and that is through its
constituted organism-its central and loca
committees-an in speaking for Richmond
their united action is necessary.