New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-01-18

having ulrect PARTISAN DtarlnB HAS Uoo"
able to arrive at unanimous conclusion.
Party considerations have their weight with
the most upright and patriotic OF men, swery-
ing them from the line of impartiality, some
times against their resolutions and without
their knowledge. 1t was natural that con-
sistent Democrat like Mr.. Potter and stanch
Grant Republican like Mr.. Foster or Mr..
Phelps should look at the conduct OF the
party in Louisiana with very
different eyes. But whatever their sympathies
or predispOsitiOns may have been, they were
not long in discovering that to the story OF
Louisiana there was only one side. They in
vited Kellogg and his friends to state their
own case. They listened to counsel. They
examined nearly one hundred witnesses, and
heard what will amount when printed to fif-
teen hundred pages of testimony and II COM
mon report speaks truth, the Republican men,
bers did all that honest men could do to find
their party IN the right The result was lala
before the country last Saturday. and we be-
lieve no good citizen has read it without
amazement and Indignation.
For notorious as the rascalities OF KellOggs
Government have always been, we never
knew until now how utterly without pallia-
ton were Its Outrages, how complete was its
subversiOn of all the principles of popular
republican administration. The wrongs COM
mitted by the Returning Board hardly deserve
the name Of frauds. for fraud suppOses some
pretense of integrity, while the operations of
this precious company of scamps were so bold
as to be merely o defiance Of law
and justice. The Committee give specimens
Of the processes by which they reduced
Conservative majority of 20 in the Legisla-
ture TO a minority of 8. The cOmmOnest trick
vas to throw out returns on pretense OF =" in
" timidatiOnn of the negroes. In not one in
stance, after the most careful inquiry, could
the Committee discover that such q state OF
things existed. The vote of the whole parish
of Rapides was reversed on the affidavit of
the President of the Returning Board that
intimidation had been practiced at three of
the polls, this gentleman not having been in
the parish on the day of the election, and de-
clining to give any testimony before the
Committee. 1t further appeared that his
affidavit had been struggled into the
proceedings of the Board without
the knowledge of the Conservative counsel,
and moreover it appeared, from the investi
cations of the Committee that his statement
was entirely false. In one place certain petty
local functonaries appointed by Kellogg, and
displaced by McEnery, had not returned to
claim their Offices after the suppression of the
September instruction, merely because the
Offices were not worth anything; that was
called Intimidation and made a pretext for
rejecting votes. In another case o Federal
Commissioner was visited by procession of
citizens to offer bail for certain persons under
arrest, and he called that derision of his
proceedings which was calculated to in
"timidate the colOred voters" In another
case, where there was Conservative majority
of 1000 Radical Supervisor stole his own
returns. In another case the Supervisor hid
himself until the time within which the re-
turns were required to be delivered to him
had passed, and then where they showed a
Conservative majority he refused to receive
them but if the majority was the other way
the limit of time was not observed. No
negro could be found who protested to have
been inundated. No white man had any
evidence that such a thing had been done.
On the contrary, the Committee REPORT that
the violence was on the other side, and the
wholesale military arrests of Conservatives
for political offenses served "to intimidate and
" sometimes even to produce stampede
" among the white voters" Otherwise they
believe the recent election to have been I'M
usually free and fair. Respecting the count
ing of the vote, they reach the very moderate
conclusion that the action of the Returning
" Board on the whole was arbitrary, unjust,
" and illegal, and that this arbitrary, unjust,
" and illegal action alone prevented the re-
" turn OF a majority of Conservative members
" to the Lower House." They could net say
less than this, and if they had not possessed
an enviable power of self-control they could
hardly have said so little.
And what manner of government is it that
thus usurps authority and perpetuates its
by setting aside electiOnsf The
Committee tell us that it is a huge organiza-
ton of corrupt Rings. hated and despised by
the whole people and "oDly upheld by the
" Federal military The Governor yields
"a degree of power scarcely exercised by any
" sovereign in the wOrld.r His Legislature
has abolished and set up courts in order to
fill the bench with his creatures. Every
kind of political control has been lodged
in his hands. The police force of
New Orleans has been turned into an
armed State militia subject to his orders.
The extraordinary election law has given him
absolute control over the registration, casting,
and counting of votes, and made it almost i'm
possible to dislodge him. Indefinite aDpropria
ions of money are placed at his disposal, and
monopolies are created for his
benefit Under this system of oppression the
securities of the State have fallen in two years
from 50 to 25. and of the City of New-0reans
rom 20 10 10. Business is destroyed. AL