The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1875-09-18
The Eat 0a TIE EAGLES FERCd

One OF the many trighttul evils
of government by strangers to
the state, who are hostile to her
people, disconnected from her ira
ditions, not warmed into state pride
by the bonds of local attachment
within her borders, is the grotesluc
spectacle, the ruinous fact, of in
competent men in the seats of pow
er. Statesmen, men CT mark and
mind, men capable of welding the
destinies of q sovereign state, would
never have abandoned their homes
to take advantage of the misfortuneS
of the South never would, at n crit
ical period which furnished the
loathsome opportunity, have assum-
cd the direction of an ignorant ma
jority in order to foist themselves
into places of public trust and hon
or. From this they would have
been restrained by sense of de-
cency, even if the fact that places
of trust and honor were ready for
their acceptance at home, had not
prevented the incentive OF necessity.
But here was the great opportu-
nifty for small men, and, unrestrain
ed by any, even the crudest, no.
tons of propriety, they assumed,
with cool assurance, public posts so
high as would, beforciime. have
dazzled the eyes of their ami ition
in the most tanciful flights of al
unhealthy Imagination
And so, with impsSience colossal,
and with n calm Indifference as to
the results to a people with whom
they had nothing in common, me-
diocrc men undertook, and succeed
ed in that movement which in ev-
cry instance in the history of ma
tions has been fraught with the
gravest calamities; they araryed the
peasantry of the state solidly against
its landed proPrietors, its ignorance
against its intelligence. Time has
not yet fully developed the sum to-
tai of disaster involved in the logi-
cal result of this reckless state craft.
But much of its bitter fruit has
been harvested, and there remains
now ripeniEg a crop of evils so
plainly to be seen AID so enormous
as to startlc humane thinkers
throughout the Union.
The danger in this array of igno-
rance against intelligence, at the
ballot box, in our case, is largely
increased by the fact that there is
necessarily involved in it .he con-
frontion of two distinct and utterly
dissimilar races of mankind.
To the statesman the problem of
the existence of two dissimilar types
of our race, as co-cquals, under the
same government, Republican in
form, and practising the dogma of
universal suffrage, is sufficiently
grave in itself. But superadd to
this the alarming complications,
that abjcct ignorance charactcrizes
one race, and that the reins ofsgOv-
eminent arc in the hands of foreign
adventures uniformly incompe-
tent and, for the most part, corrupt,
who, in order to maintain their
power, arS busy in exciting the
pIejudices of the ignorant race
against the other, and the mind is
appalled, in contemplating The
probable catastrophe.
1t may well be questioned wheth-
CT that state is the moro cursed
which is governed by corrupt men,
or that which is governed by
men who are incapable. Poor, OPP
pressed Mississippi labors under the
dou BILE curse of being governed by
incapacity and corruption combined.
Incapable and, generally, cor
rupt men poIlute the places
of a long line of statesmen.
The birds of the night have made
their homes in the aerie. Who that
is true and magnanimous shall con-
denim without pity the desperation
of a proud and gallant people!