Los Angeles daily herald., 1874-06-21

officers, to refuse their assent to laws
the most wholesome and necessary for
the public good, and when such laws
have been passed they have utterly
refused to obey them.
They have procured the passage of
other laws, for their own benefit alone,
by which they have put untold mil
lions into their own Golfers, to the in
Jury of the entire commercial and in
dustrial interests OF the country.
They have influenced legislation to
suit themselves, by bribing venal leg
islators to betray the true interests of
their constituents, while others have
been kept quiet by the compliment of
free passes.
They have repeatedly prevented the
reelection of representatives. for op-
posing with manly firmness, their in
vasion of the peoples rights.
They have by false representations
and subterfuge induced the people to
subscribe funds to build roads, whose
rates, when built, are so exorbitant,
that in many instances transportation
by private conveyance is less burden
some.
They have procured charters by
which they condemn and appropriate
our lands without adequate cOmpensa-
ton therefor, and arrogantly claim
| that by virtue of these charters they
are absolutely above the control of
legal enactments.
They have procured a law Of Con-
gress by which they have DISPOSE
essed hundreds of farmers of the
homes that by years Of toll they have
built up; have induced others to
mortgage their farms for roads never
intended to be built, and after squan-
dering the money thus obtained, have
| left their victims to the mercy of
courts over which they held absolute
sway.
They have INSTRUCTED the admins
tration of justice by injunctions pro-
cured from venal judges, by legal
bubbles and appeals from court to
court, with intent to wear out or ruin
| the prosecutor, openly avowing their
determination to make 1t so terrible
for the public to prosecute them that
| they will not dare undertake it.
They have virtually made judges
dependent on their will alone, and
have procured their appointment for
| the express purpose of reversing de-
cision of the highest court of the ma
| ton, by which millions were gained
to them, to the injury of the holders
of the bonds and the breaking down
this last safeguard of American free
| men.
They have affected to render them
selves independent of and superior to
the civil power, by ordering large
bodies of hirelings to enforce their UNI
lawful exactions, and have protected
them from punishment for an injury
they might inf1ict upon peaceful citi-
zens, while ejecting them from their
conveyances for refusing to pay more
| than the rate Of fare prescribed by law.
They have arrested and summoned
| from their homes for trial, at distant
points, other citizens for the same Of
Tense of refusing to pay more than the
legal fare, putting them to as great
inconvenience and expense as possible,
and still further evincing their deter
mination to make it too terrible for
the people to dare engage in any legal
conflict with them.
They have combined together to de-
stroy competition and to practice an
unjust discrimination, contrary to the
expressed provisions of our constitu-
tion ard the spirit of eur law. They
have virtually cut off our trade with
distant parts of the world by their I'M
! Just determinations and by their eX-
orbitant rates of freight, forcing upon
us the alternative Of accommodating
upon our hands worthless surplus,
or of giving three-fourths of the price
our customers pay for our products for
their transportation.
Under the false and specious pre-
tence of developing the country, they
have obtained enormous grants of
public lands from Congress, and now
retard rather than develop its settle
ment, by the high prices charged for
such land.
They have converted the bonds
fraudulently obtained from the gov
eminent, into great corruption fund,
with which they are enabled to bride
and control legislatures, and subvert
every branch Of government to their
own base and sordid purpose.
They have increased the already
intOlerable burden Of taxation, which
the people have to endure, compared
with which the tea and stamp tax
which precipitated the war of the rev.
olution, seems utterly insignificant,
by the appropriation of money from
the public treasury, while they have
escaped taxation themselves by evad-
ing and violating the expressed pro-
visions of their charters.
In every stage of these expressions
we have petitioned our legislatures for
redress in the most humble terms.
Our repeated petitions have heen an
swered only by silence, or by attempts
to frame laws that shall seem to meet
our wants, but that are, in fact, only a
legal snare for courts to disagree upon
and for corporations to disobey.
Nor have we been wanting in at
tempts to obtain redress through Con-
gress. We have warned them from
time to time of these various and re-
peated entertainments upon our rights;
we have reminded them of the circum-
stances of our emigration and settle
ment here; we have appealed to them
as the administrators of free and inn
partial government, to- protect us from
| these encroachments, which, if con-
tinued, would inevitably end in the
utter destruction of those liberties for
which our fathers gave their lives, and
the reinstatement of privileged classes
and an aristocracy of wealth, worse
than that from which the war of the
revolution freed US. They too have
been deaf to the voice of justice and
of duty. We must therefore acquiesce
in the necessity which conIpels us to
denounce their criminal Indifference
to our wrongs, and hold them as we
hold our legislature-enemies to the
producer-to the mOnopolist friends.
We, therefore, the producers of this