The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1875-07-22
FATE OF TEXAs-HOW WE ARE TO
BE DELUDED AND ROBBED.


FATE OF TExAs-HOw WE ARE TO
BE DELUDED AND ROBBED.
If we accept the assertion as final that
the Constitution approves no pretext for
the secession of State, as the Virgiuian,
Mr.. Southall, asserts, we must also cOncede
that the Constitution furnishes less author
Ity to strip State of Its attributes and re-
duce it to the pitiable condition of prov
ince governed by the Presidents appointed
satraps. When Texas was a mere Federal
dependency, and when Lieutenant Governor
Hubbard and others doubted the wisdom of
the present reformation of the State Con-
stitution lest the dictator called in deris-
ion the president" might interpose and,
displacing Coke, set up Sheridan in Aus
tin, there was capacity for perjury ascribed
TO Grant and to those who would have sus-
tanned him in his lawless acts of lawless
despotism. II the Constitution do not
authorize secession it surely invests Grant
with no such authority as he has exerted
in these Southern States. Mr.. SOuthall
says that if there be no provision under
which star may shoot madly from its
sphere there is quite as little for its being
degraded into paltry satellite. In spite
of occasional perturbation or temporary
eclipse they still wheel along in their ap-
pointed orbits with their essential radiance
as undimmed as when they first sang to-
gether in choral sympathy. War has es-
tablished the perpetuIty of the Union,
but with no less fnality of force and
of philosophy is the States indestructi-
bility confirmed. But while the South
is field for marshals and postmasters
and contractors and customs officers and,
wherever blacks are supreme, for adventu-
rous pedagogues and Congressman and local
placeholders of all classes, and all from the
North, these Southern States, in Northern
eyes, are only convenient rewards for fidel-
ity distributed by men welding Federal
power. While furnishing Offices for thou
sands of strangers these provincial adjuncts
of the Union are also valuable as consumers
of 'he peculiar products of Northern indus
try. We are forced by the tariff system to
buy from the North alone, and have no laws
compelling them to pay forty or one hun
dred per cent. above its value for cotton or
rice or tobacco. On the contrary, tobacco
is heavily taxed and, not very long ago, an
enormous excise duty was imposed upon
cotton. The whole machinery of the Fed
eral'system is not only employed to obliter-
ate State lines, since the perfection of this
result inures to the perpetuation of the pres
ent subordination of these provinces to the
East, but the present leading idea of East
ern Democracy absolutely makes the West
ern and Southern States hewers of wood
and drawers of water, through all coming
time, for the monOpolists of Federal bonds.
Just as the several States are about to re-
sumo their proper constitutional relations to
one another, and when the protective tariff
has wrought the result predicted thirty
years ago by Henry Clay, making American
cotton goods cheaper in America than Eng
lish cotton goods in England-at the mo-
ment this result has been achieved at the
cost of the South and of slavery, and our
commercial freedom becomes possible, just
then we are to have our limbs shackled for
ever, and forever must we pay golden trIb
ute to the imperial bondholders of the
East. 1t were better to have the tariff and
navigation and fishing bounty acts and
custom houses stand always than bow
our necks to this yoke, infinitely more
intolerable than any that begat secession.
Texas, as we have said, can bear it, because
the resources of Texas are infinite, and the
people of Texas have boundless riches in a
faultless climate, exuberant soil, and in a
railway system, soon to become, if states
men shape our destinies, absolutely perfect.
But it is not the less terrible reflection
that at the very moment we begin to hope
for political equality among the States, for
the reproduction of State boundary lines,
for the modification of the tariff at that
very moment mightier burden and more
| enduring calamity, IN the shape of an in
each bond made to represent gold, Is fas-
| tened upon us and our children forever.
These States must still be provinces, and
our toll and that of our children, and the
industry of all these late satrapies, must
still be mortgaged to our old masters. They
release the iron grasp of despotIc authority
on the one hand and clutch our purses al
the same instant with relentless ferocity
and maddening cupidity on the other. Ii
Is designed by the New York World that
Texas, and all these States, shall never be
more than depraved, plundered province:
of the bond-holding East. We are to bt
freed In name and enslaved forever in fact.
They prate beautifully about the recrowne6
Democracy and reproduced State rights
and yet, while thus pleasing our fancies
| plunder our pockets. The bayonet is re
moved from our throats, but the robber'.
hand still has access to our pockets, and We
are forever enslaved by an inextinguishable
intolerable debt. Let the bonds become
greenbacks, and these will be distributed
and absorbed, and unprecedented business
activity will supervene, or accept tn,
theory of Eastern Democracy, and of East
ern Radicalism, and the wealth of the Soutl
must flow forever from all these fields anC
towns and plains in a ceaseless current int
the gold-distended Golfers of cities of tn,
East paved with gold.
THE WOES OF ICELAND AND OF ICE
LANDEHS.