Litchfield enquirer., 1874-03-12
LouisIAEa.

hepuDhcans m Congress to the dancef o
 listening only to the lobbyists witll whicl
 our monopolies pack Washington iron
 the beginning to the end of every session
 The regulation of railroad fares .;..I
 freights will probably be the result of inc
 first political successes of the grangers
 and we have no doubt they will soon get
 all that legislation can give them in thei1
 righteous war against the exactions of
 railroad and other corporations. But the
 still graver difficulties of the oppressed
 South meet no such ready relief at the
 hands of Congress. Yet nothing can be
 plainer than the need of relief. Louisi-
 ana is confessedly governed by legisla- ture that was never elected by the peo- 1 pie. She has governor that was beaten
 at the polls, and Supreme Court, a ma
 jority of whose judges, if We are not mis-
 taken, owe their seats to the very fraud
 they pretended to legalize. South Cara
 lima has an organized band of plunderers l instead of government. And yet Con-
 gress hesitates to interfere with the
 ''rights of States"
 What, we would ask, Is the meaning of
 "a republican form of government in the
 following section of our national consti-
 tuition?
 Sec. 4-The United States shall guaranty to
 every State In this union republican form of
 government and shall protect each of them
 against invasion; and, on application of the leg lslature, or of the executive (when the legisla. ture cannot be convened). against domestic yio- lence.
 Many of our senators seem to assume that the expression republican form" re- fers to the shell and not to the kernel of the matter. According to the1r view a state government like that which Angus tus Caesar imposed on Rome-a pure des- potism in substance though scrupulously republican in form-would be entitled to call in the national troops to keep down Its unwilling subjects ! Everyone under stands that it is the fear of such interfer- ence that keeps up the Kellogg usurpa- ton Tn Louisiana. Under our national constitution, the republican court of last resort-the fright of revolution''-is abol- lshed. No matter how illegal. tyrannous and oppressive State government may be. 1t has the right to put down its assail- ants by calling in the national troops. In short, under this view, President Grant is tine brute force to be directed by the intelligence of Kellogg or Mo- ses in this grave matter of sustaining "a republican form of government" in Louis jana or South Carolina! Such a con- struction of our national constitution is libel on the memory of the great men who framed it. What that clause means IS that our national governments shall guar antee to the people of the several states that true self-government which if the state were independent, its citizens might be forced to seek through revolution. In other words, when the nation withdrew from the citizens of the several states their old chance of revolution against a tyranny, they gave instead guarantee that the nation would itself put down all tyrannies. Instead of this, however, this guarantee of the liberties of the people of Louisiana has been perverted into the shackle that holds them in slavery. Re store them the right of testing their gov ernment by force, which we are so reioic- ed to see resorted to by the oppressed of other countries, and how long would the Kellogg usurpation cumber the ground?
 We have spoken of the kind of misgov- ernment rife in these states so f:e- quently that we do not wish to enlarge on that branch of the question. Every new development only confirms our for mer opinion that no civilized or even semi-civilized government in the world is more thoroughly tyrannous, corrupt and than the state governments of South Carolina and Louisiana. With an- nual taxation reaching the enormous fig ure of five per cent in the large cities, and almost if not quite as ruinous in the country, they have really an organized system of confscation, vastly more op- pressiye than downright agrarianism For, were the property in those states to be honestly divided pro rata among the the citizens, and then were all to start fair under an honest local administration, their future would promise infinitely bet ter than it now does. Under the present almost the entire net pro- duce of the land is divided among horde of thieving officials and legislat tors who will not spare even enough to pay the in- terest on the enormous debts they have accumulated, Misgovernment has reach ed, indeed, such a height as to bar all material progress, and the intelligent property holder cries for military des- potism as mitigation of his present suf- ferings.
 But, say the hesitating majority in Con- gress, Wait for time to correct these evils. There will soon be another elec- ton in Louisiana. Then the people can repudiate the Kellogg usurpation if they wish. They cannot. The rascals in power have only to repeat their former frauds to bring about the former results; and then, if the people rise, to call on the national bulldog to put the people down. In South Carolina even fair vote would offer no chance of reform. A penniless majority is systematically robbing the property-holding minority, and until the national government that established the existing form of misrule comes to their relief, there is no hope of reform. That such gross tyraanies can long exist in these
 United States, we cannot believe; and the
 party that does not crush them will surely in end be crushed by them.
 It is thought that the bill for a commis-