Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1874-03-13
A New Rip Van Wrinkle.

The New York Daily Graphic Of
the 9Th: commenting on the speech ct
Judge Arthur, Of Kentucky, against
the bill eff Mr.. McCrary of Iowa, to regu-
late railroad tariffs on inter State rail-
roads, says:
It is just as we expected. Our ven
cradle friend States Rights has put in
an appearance on the cheap transpor-
tation issue. Such an attack on his
traditional territory as was proposed by
Mr.. McCrary was too much for this
once powerful and always bellicose in
divldual, and he sprang to his feet and
shouldered his crutch and brandished
his sword of lath and shingle sabre in
right military fashion. 1t was in the
House that he did it, and yesterday,
and Judge Arthur, of Kentucky, is the
name he goes by. His arguments are
curiosities. They seem like arms and
armor borrowed from middle-age
museum. 1t is difficult to realize that
twenty or thirty years ago such notions
were the chief stock in trade of a
great national party, and not surpris-
ing that the hearty belief in and at
tempt to apply them to. national legis-
lation produced civil war Judge
Arthur must know that the excellent
gentlemen who framed the Constitu-
ton we're neither omniscient nor en-
dowed with supernatural foresight
They could not anticipate the applica-
ton of steam to locomotion and the
general purposes of manufacturing and
transportation. Indeed, they had no
idea of the actual dimensions of the
country whose constitution they were
framing, much less of the rapid de-
velopment of it's resources and the
crisis it would have to pass through.
But they made their instrument suf-
fciently elastic for all practical pur-
poses. and left it to the common sense
of their descendants to adopt such
needful measures as the altered cir
cumstances of new times might re-
quire.
In giving congress authority to regu-
late the commerce between States the
Constitution makes all necessary pro-
visions for the future, and all that is
required to rescue the merchants and
manufacturers of the East and the farm
els of the West from the grippe of greedy
and extortional corporations. AL
low that this would give it power of
regulating the fares on canal boats and
in stage-coaches. Should it ever be-
come important to regulate the fares
on these conveyances, certainly Con-
gress ought to do so. But it does not
follow that a man shall fight mos
quitoes because he attempts to protect
himself from constructor that is
slowly coiling in enormous folds
around his body, and will strangle him
unless destroyed. Judge Arthur for
gets that the United States is not
body of isolated and independent com
monwealths, but nation, and as such
has all the rights necessary to its own
self defence, and for the protection OF
the whole country against the extor-
tons of monopolies and the oppression
of corporations. 1t may have been a
mistake on the part Of the nurses that
they did not put the infant Republic in
cast-iron swaddling bands. 1t would
have made matters so easy and comtor-
table, and have saved all trouble and
expense of altering and patching and
getting new clothes. But the fact
that they did clothe the young child in
flannel and linnen, and leave 1t to the
commons sense of the future, argues
we'll for their sagacity however it may
trouble people who have deficiency Of
common sense, Of whom, it would seem
there are not few.