The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1878-08-22
VOL. VII.
TEXAS IN 1900.

! The day is not distant when the Fed
eral Union will be coterminous with the
continent. Railway and telegraph sys
TENS perfected will unity the States
and, obliterating distances, practically
contract the country's confines until
this continental Union will evolve il
its interests and in oneness of the peo
pie more perfect practical and govern
mental unity than that pervadIng the
States ofto-dsy. Selfish personal and le.
cal jealousies will always exist. Party
leaders find it profitable to pander to
them. Great men WIN power by sheer
force of greatness. Webster would
have been the master of New England
If he had never left the little New
Hampshire village of his nativity.
But when smaller men could
not command popular veneration
they have appealed successfully
to local popular prejudices. If ones
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wealth of Texas it may be full of re-
fulgent glories when contemplated at
Mckinney or Tyler or San Antonio.
In these facts consists the imaginary
necessity for the subdivision of the
State; in the real and practical con-
traction of the States boundaries,
wrought by railways or telegraphs,
consists the absurdity of the PROPOSE
tion. which, accepted, involves simply
dimlnution of the riches and power
Of the commonwealth. Railways and
telegraphs, abolIshing distances, con-
tract space, and, obviating practical
objections to territorial greatness, there
is left an absolute necessity for the
maintenance of unbrokep territorial
unity. II the Union be perpetuated
the power of Texas in the Union should
grow with the years and growth of the
Union. We would hardly consent, as
members of the Union, to exchange
places with Rhode Island, Maine or Mis-
sissippi. Texas will soon have greater
Federal power than all the Gulf States.
The House, and not the Senate, holds
the purse, and thus the sword and
Texas's power in the House, before
the century closes, will be greater than
that of New York and Pennsyl-
vania. The enemies, but not the
lovers, of Texas have therefore
sought to effect the subdivision of
the commonwealth.
If the Union be perpetual and the
recognition of statehood and of State
rights by the Union be desirable there
are none, save men of petty, selfish
ambition, who would propose the
severance of any district from the COM
monwealth; if the Union be ephemeral
the greatness and power of Texss
would be of infinitely greater value to
the people, and thus it can never occur,
by any possibility, that the defeat of a
Hubbard or of Throckmorton or
Devine will cause the people of any
section of the State to sacrifice them
selves or the greatness of the State on
the altar of personal ambition or to
avenge violence done local and per
sonal predictions.
1t was in maintenance of the unity of
Texas that the great men of the repub-
lie and of the State provided for the con-
struction of system of railways bind
ing together, with ligaments of iron,
the remetest districts of the empire.
To perfect the unity of Texas, we
would have the Texas Pacific Railway
finished, having branches binding to-
gether, ''as with hooks of STEEL"
northern, southern, eastern and
western districts of the broad common
wealth. That this unity of Texas
might be indestructible, we have per-
sistently sought to induce the rich and
the poor of Austin to construct mar
row gauge railway from the capital to
El Paso. But there is infinitely less
probability of the secession of Dallas
from Texas than of Texas from the
Union, and the one result will never be
accomplished till the other Is achieved.
Texas aspires to, and will yet WELD, a
share of omnipotence in the Union.
The State has been deemed a remote
province of the great empire. The
course of trade was inverted by forces
of Federal government and inter-
State commerce, instead of seeking
the ocean through Galveston, has been
turned backward to st. Louis, Chicago
and New York. Subsidized ocean
steamers are never suffered to land at a
Southern port. Our trade with Mexico,
Brazil and Cuba must be conducted
through New York and Boston.
Congressional subsection to the East
must be supplanted by congressional
subsection to the South and West. The
Mississippi river, damned up and made
to flow backwards by congressional &C
ton designed, ike the proposition to
dismsmber Texas, to perpetuate our
provincialism, will become another
AdriAtic and, as Calhoun prophesied, an
Finland sea-" Texas, instead of q
plucksd and plundered province, will
be an imperial State, demanding, and
not begging, benefactions at the hands
of the Union. Our friends at Dallas
should be patient at least, until Texas
has achieved, by sheer force of great
ness, for herself, and for the South,
practical blessings not otherwise at
tainable, and then. about the year 1900,
we may spproye the severance of the
State into bAiliwicks enough for every
ambitious. petty party leader that Iuns
blessed ward meeting in Dallas.
BALLRNGER AND HANCOCK.
We hsva asserfed of JufiCe Hancock