Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1876-04-08
For the Chronicle.
"OFFICERS TO THE FRONT.v

nor, as the fgurative might conjecture,
the giving friendly boost to some
prime favorite. by intimating that he's
all a man should, and some he should mt
be and the "willinest" of Barkises to
sacrifice his aspirations for private
life to the public good but instead.
somewhat which must entitle me to
an Immortality of gratitude from all
who ever paid taxes You see its
about finance. I've been specializing
thereupon of course in the abstract,
for everybody's finances seem to have
trick ofremaining abstract, deucedly
hard to overcome. We are all agreed,
save perhaps Col. Colyar and the other
great subterranean whose interest in
coal and the penitentiary dates back
to the affair in Eden, that the State
debt must be paid, but how? All !
the how is likely to be very bell-the-
cat problem, for official faces are flint
against retrenchment of numbers or
salary, and indeed we do pay three
men hardly enough to keep one honest,
and the people, betwixt the mill-stones
of hard times and higher taxes, will
be apt to make grinding lively pro-
cess. Certainly the outlook is gloomy
if my policy" don't prevail. IF it
does, everything will be lovely-the
happy family of side-show will be no
more harmonious. And this same
policy is logical deduction from GER
tain admitted as essential facts, to-wit,
namely: that the State derives an in
come from her penitentiary through
lease which is not Improbable to its
holders, and that she supplies her
people with the standard commodity
of education very much cheaplier than
they can supply themselves. From
these premises it is ready inference
that only the extension of the prlnci-
pies therein contained is needed to
free us from 1.-The ills we now endure.
To make an application, for I'm in
tensely practical and have a head for
details, tax everybody within one
hundred dollars of all he's worth and
superadd poll-tax of that amount,
which if one don't pay, he shall go
penitentiaryward, where he'll be a
source of revenue once in his life.
This would be taxation once for always.
1t wouldn't be heavy work either-a
few sweeping enactments would do IT,
so few indeed that they might be passed
even by Legislature which has got
two United States Senators to elect,
without serious detriment to its i'm
portant local legislation. Here's
richness do you say? OF course.
There's millions in it, six hundred
of EN- in fact, and the State being sole
owner thereof would pay off its trife
of debt, if the bondholders could be
persuaded to take the money, and then
without any more bother about it just
proceed as a maternal government
should, to take cake of her own people
out of her own pocket.
Saith Billings the wise, Get an ed
ucation and clothes if you can-at any
rate, get the clothes; )" and shall the
State which provides education not be
trusted for clothes? Aye, marry, and
vituals too. And then there'd be an
Office for every man, for of course the
more government is administered, the
more administrators are needed. And,
as this wholesale government main
tenance must be very much more
economical than the present individual
system, the handsome salaries-paid
in State warrants-that could be we'll
afforded would, to say nothing of de-
priving the currency question among
us, Of all vitality, knock hard times
clear into the next centennial. The
thing is altogether practicable, for
State appointments and the poll-tax
would gather them in so numerous
ly that the residue would not be more
than sufficient for well-devised sys-
tenn of County Superintendent, which
is indeed the very life and essence of
the scheme, the cap-stone as it were,
of the statelicst dream Ger builded
under the SUM-.
Our county is reasonably well-to-do
with one-him Of Public Instruction,
| mean. Suppose we had thousand
of him! Why, emparadised is the
poorest sort OF a word, in fact just no
word at all to describe our state, for
if such a band of brothers covered the
face of earth, all might rest in the
shade thereof, calmlier than a baby
slumbering on the mother-breast,
lighter than a stolen watermelon on
fifteenth amendments conscience.
Best of all, there couldn't be any
monopoly aboutit Every place would
have its full men 's-worth of Superin-
tendency, for the constitution express
ly forbids any mans filling two offices
of trust, firofit or trouble at one and
the same time. AS to what would be
superintended, why just everything
mind, matter, and middle ground of
physic ethics. For example, some do
affirm that corn bread, as too heating
ly carbonaceOus food, has tendency
to deprave mems bodies and souls,
wherefore it is desirable that wheat
culture become more general, so we'll
have Superintendent of Seed Wheat,
duly authorized to examine and satisfy
the eternal fitness of intending sewers,
and to duly issue government grain at
the rate of quart and gills per acre
to all applicants. If any, by having
no land, fail of the benefit or regard
the provisions as too contemptibly
meagre to be aught save an embarrass-
ment to effectual seeding, let him be
told that great systems cannot be ex-
pected to bend and at themselves to
individual exigenoies. Again, Others
do hold new and glossy hats, eminent
" preservative of public virtue, and
;o5oo1 T Jouhf not that the Drnal res