The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-05-23
COMING TO THEIR SENSES.

Wa command the following excerpt from
Frank Lesle's newspaper OF recent da'e' as
ev;ncno an unmistakable waking up from the
blind and stupid prejudices which have Tor
SO long period of time warped the minds OF
onr fellow countrymen of the North. 1t is
most encouraging sight when able journals,
not only of the Democratic and Independent
order. but those which have been bitterly
Radical and unfair, begin to see that one
section of our common country can not
be oppressed and misgoverned without
its reacting upon the other sections
and endangering the whole fabric. Inc
farce of free government which has been en-
acted in the South for the last nine years mas
had more destructive and poisonous effect
mon republican institutions than our North
ern brethren seem to have understood OF
apprebended until recently They now find
that the cancer which has eaten into the body
noIitic of the South is threatening the
entire system, and that no mere temporizing
policy, no triling remedies are adequate 70
stop the ravages Of the dangerous disease.
They have become painfully aware that the
noHcy Of having one form of governmental
military despotism -for the South, and another
form for the North and West, will not work,
and that either the laws must be administered
without regard to localities, and with justice,
or the government itself must fall. The spe-
cial legislation for the protection OF class at
the expense of another Glass; the Force bills,
and the action of the President in overtop-
ping legitimate and setting up alien govern
ments are now discovered to have been not
only grievous errors in so far as the South is
concerned, but damaging blows ct the Union
itself. The following arraignment, therefore,
of the Republican party will be recognized
as entirely just:
How his political rights have been indicated
under the auspices Of the Republican party may
be seen to-day in the significant TACT that the
African voter has come TO the best enjoyment OF
his elective franchise in those Southern States
which are under Democratic rule. In States ike
South Carolina Mississippi and Louisiana, where
the Republican party has held the coloreo voters
in its leading strings, we have seen nothing but
peculatioD, anarchy and strife. From States Ike
Virginia, which have been longest under Conserv-
alive sway not a single murmur OF wrong and
1outrag &c has been heard. .
From States like Alabama and Arkansas these
frantic cries have simply served to mark the TACT
that the demon OF civil discord was impotently
seeking to rend the body which he found himself
compelled to leave. Now that he has been ex-
PEELED. the spirit of peace has returned to these
iong-oppres. ed and afflicted communities. And
vet. under the pretense of protecting the colored
citizen in his right Of suffrage, what encroach-
ments have not been dared by the Republican
leaders on the limitations of the Constitution and
on the acknowledged rights OF the States!
And the same may be said Of the negros civil
rights. In pretended afirmance and protection
OF this class Of rights, whole system OF new
tangled jurisprudence has been built up on the
-uns of municipal government. And to such an
extreme has this pretension been carried, that
to-day Republican Judges OF the United states
Circuit Courts feel themselves constrained to ad,
wise their grand jurors that indictments found
under the lstes stretches OF this legislation Will
be summarily dismissed On constitutional
grounds. ,:.:o
This legislation, unnecessary ana impontc,
even il il were consti utiona, seems to have been
devised simply for purposes of judicial vexatlon
and social ann ,yance. As such. 1t can only tend
TO embtter the relations which it processes to
put under the shield OF law, and has thus far
served to accompl sh little more than to give
fresh poignancy to the trite morality, incucated
by the poetry OF Horace equally with the political
PHILOSOPHY OF De Tocqueville to the effect that
there is no country in which everything can be
proyde1 for by the laws, or in which political
institutions can prove subSutute lor common
sense and public morality.