New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1874-08-11
0nR pLuNDERED CHARITIES.

wear it has sailed around the world OF
opinion. Traversing SO many chimes II
has, like any other great traveller, returned
with large amount Of liberation and phil
lauthropy. It is not the same PIC that
set out a year ago on mission OF des'ruo.
ton to the Union, the reconstruction OF
Confederate ideas and the extermlnas'on
by mob and single combat OF all whose
complexion of visage or faith did not suit
ii. No. It is peripatetic PIC, when
has been stricken with conversion, and
now, instead of breathing slaughter,
utters words of peace and pleasantness'
1t returns from its wanderings with a
conviction that it's own old flag and Its
own old fellow citizens are at last better
than the cosmopolitan customs that show
so much gilt and glitter across the seas
and develop so much squalor and misery
when examined at hand.
The Pic has not hesitated to proclaim
the faults of its friends, and even to
acknowledge sometimes the merits OF its
political opponents To vary little the
metaphor the Pic is ''tamed shrew." II
bids its tolerant sisters to 'unknit that
threat'ning unkind brow" and make
peace in the political household.
The latest independent declaration Of
the Picaye.ne is an essay and exposition OF
the abuse Of corporate trust by the au.
thorities of this city over certain great
public charities, bequeathed for the pur-
poses designated by the donors. It is
true the Picayune exculpates the corporate
abuse Of these ''improvident legacies" on
the suggestion that the intentions Of the
testators were either SO unwise or SO badly
worded that anybody world have been
justified in defeating their intent by dis
abling their finances.
This, the Picay,uae says, has always
been the characteristic Of the city govern
ment of New Orleans:
We have had several of such requests to
this city which would have tailed by virtue
of the impracticable conditions attached to
them by the donors, even if the city had
ever been disposed to regard such legacies
with any great respect, or had possessed
the administrative and organizing power to
carry them into operation. All our city
governments have proved deficient in these
qualities ever since that old calicO.nOsed
Frenchman, as Larry Moore called Mayor
Roffignac, abdicated his long and prosper
GUS reign over this city.
Scant gratitude or respect has been shown
by our corporate authorities to the donors
Of charitable legacies. Their whimsical
provisions have not only been disregarded,
and generally on good grounds, but by viz
tue Of thereof the funds derived from these
legacies have been swallowed up by the
corporation for other purposes than those
contemplated by the donors.
So, this has been the grab game prac-
ticed in New Orleans, certainly for twenty
or thirty years before the war and, accord
ing to history and tradition, ever since its
foundation. These charitable donations,
specified as property stolen, because the
conditions prescribed by the donors to
regulate the disposal of their own prop
ter it, were as follows:
The Girod bequest.
The McDonogh.
The Alexander Milne.
The John D. Fink.
Every one OF these legacies, amounting
in the aggregate to several millions, were
shackled with impracticable conditions,
and for that reason mot satisfactory One)
tI,a M do hos
misapp1ied and squandered,
What an admission Because the
money could be squandered therefore it
was squandered. So "the Girod bequest
was nearly eaten up by the lawyers.
John McDonogh's grand bequest. esti-
mated at the time of his death at $1,000
600, was the crazy scheme Of an old enthu-
siast, who spent his whole life in grinding
the poor.
His will was properly decided ''to be
impracticable and at war with the funda-
mental ideas Of our legal tenures, that
oppose 'the accumulation Of too large
estates in single hand"
Certainly this idea could not have been
better executed than by entrusting the
of these estates to such a
corporation. 1t has never, out Of seven
millions of dollars bequathed to educate
the people, educated single pupil, and of
the whole fund ''there is not one dollar Of
it left" the fund being represented on the
books of the city by debit to the city as
legatee against credit of the city as
trustee. The McDonogh fund was thus
fully administered. One Fink gave his
estate to educate Protestant children. The
of New Orleans, which had
defeated so successfully the insidious at
tempt Of McDonogh to sap the founda-
tons of property tenure, advanced
with equal alacrity to the defense.
Of religious freedom. 1t effectually
prevented any Protestant children from
deriving any benefit from the ''improvi
dent legacy" of their benefactor, and it is
due to the common councils of that day
to say that if any other ''improvident
legacy had been dedicated to the educa-
ton of Catholic children it would in like
manner have been prevented from fulfill
ing its mistaken mission, orthodox or
hereto. With impartial rapacity the city
authorities of New Orleans "took the
money and property of the polemical
Fink, "and that" says the Pie, "was the
last of it," Whatever became" it adds.
"of the proceeds of the McDonogh and
Fink funds is a question which may en-
gage the laborious investigation of some