The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1876-01-06
AGRIEVOUs POPULAR CRIME.

GRIEVOUS POPULAR CRIME.
Paris, Texas, is full of joy. The sure
coming Of four railways to that fortunate
interior town is asserted, and the people are
perfectly blest. Wherever railway pur-
sues its devious way, lands become more
and more valuable, homes more tasteful and
attractive, villages assume fresher, more
attractive appearance, the peoples eyes lose
the lack-luster stare of stupidity, and men
and women, brought into hourly contact
with the exterior world, are made to think
and act as never before. There are ever
charmiag homes and gardens glowing in
rosy sunshine along the pathway of every
locomotive discharging, as it does, tasks
alike of preacher and pedagogue. A great
railway line winds it's way beneath and
above and circles about the mountains of
California. Its pathway has been defined
and trackway built nearly seven hundred
miles on a direct line from the Californian
capital to the nearest point on the Gulf of
Mexico. Nations and States and seas and
cities and oceans and ships and inter-conti-
mental commerce confess the beneficeuce of
the builders of this shortest possible line
within American territory between the two
worlds, and yet ignorance contesses
pr"judices and vulgar enmity to rail-
ways and railway builders, End these
are absolutely injected into the new
Constitution of Texas, saturated as it is
with tollies that fell like rain storm from
dense clouds of prejudice. While the
Convention sat, if ctAning demagogues
sought to defeat measures of any character
or purpose, it was only needful for the
leader of the throng to sing out, RAILROAD ~
''RailroadP' at the top of his sonorous
voice and the pending ordinance or resolu-
ton was damned. Carpet-baggers and
thieves and Adventures, in former age,
when Radicalism and roguery went hand in
hand, ravaged Texas and bribed legisla-
lures chosen by blacks, and representing,
properly enough, forces of government then
suffered to exist. These knaves made money
by the sale of charters, and by land grants
sold to the highest bidders. But the peo-
pie might as we'll detest all future legisla-
tive bodies as all railway corporations. If
villainy were practiced, the law-9iver, as
well as the corporation, was swindler of
Texas. We must therefore deprecate this
unreasoning, absurd hostility to railroad
builders and owners, crystalized in clauses
of the new Constitution.
People build these highways with their
own money on their own land to make
money. They enrich towns. villages, and
country, and bless the age and race, and yet
intolerable idiocy declares that these high.
ways, which, wherever they haye gone,
have quadrupled wealth and population,
must remain forever subject to the caprices
and prejudices of each successive Legislature
empowered to regulate rates of freight and
passenger charges. If county town fal
into decay, and vigorous, enterpiising, pub
hc-spirited men construct railway at en-
ormous cost within three miles of any col
lection of corner groceries the road must
touch the delectable place that passengers
may drink to the health and long life of the
wise and generous trainers of the new Con
stitution. The Fejee islander destroys his
greatest benefactor and dimes to stupefac
ton on missionary steak. Even so of Ruta
bagaism, as contradistlnguished from Gran
gerism, in its relations to railway builders
These would shower infinite blessings, a!
the Paris Press and every civilized citizeI
of Texas confesses, upon Texas and tn,
people and farms and towns and intelli
gence of Texas, and yet they find themselves
damned to infamy and poverty and robbed
remorselessly by the very organic law o
the State.
No wonder Rutabagaism, seeing what i
had done and seeing how it had excited tn
hostility of each enterprising railroad owne
and builder in Texas and how wide dis
tricts of the West would lie reused to bite
hostility, sought to find countervailin
force by trading with Tom Scott. Tom Scot
and the people he would bless are bough
by an ordinance which confesses its purpos
on its face. 1t declares that Tom SEQ,
must die with the new Constitution, an
Scott In saving himself must save the dir
and unhappy offspring of redoutsble Pr
tabagaism. The wrongfulness Of the trad
is hardly worse than the multiplication
offices and their use as bribes proffere
candidates for earnest advocacy of III
adoption of the uushapely scheme = Stat
, government. But we Saay proposed to sa
that nothing is vai4er or emptier tina
r prejudices of ignorant people against raj
| road builders and owners, and they wb
: pander to these passions of ignorance a
5 the worst enemies to Texan progress j
{ wealth, intelligence and greatness and {
' the unity of the mighty commonwealth.
THE STATESMAN AND THE OFFLCl
SEER ERS.