The morning star and Catholic messenger., 1878-08-11


Q visitor or refugee from some place afaics.
ed with fever, We cannot comprehend
what right neighbors have to interfere
| against It, much less what q town corpo
ration ten miles of has to do with it. We
have never read the charter of Vicksburg,
but 1t must be very unrepublican sort OF
document If 1t gives the residents Of Ger
tain corporate limits right to govern and
make laws for the citizens living In con
tiguOus territory and having no voice
whatever in the matter.
Such thing may have been enacted,
however, by q Republican Legislature,
and be not yet repealed, for we know very
well by experience in Louisiana how 10th
Democratic politicians are to undo the
rascslties of Republican tradition.
1t 10 exceedingly inconvenient to break
up the ordinary channels of travel, and
especially of trade, and it ought not to be
done unless imperatively necessary. 1t is
not every slight danger that should place
an embargo on an established business
intercourse. Such policy would be q
grievous impediment to commerce, and
commerce is the highway of civilization.
Atthis season of the year it is customary for
interior southern towns, settlements and
plantations to get certain supplies from
New Orleans, Mobile, Galveston and other
ports. Among these articles, bagging, ties,
groceries and liquors are prominent, and
any thing that makes it necessary for the
consumers of such things to send for them
elsewhere than to their usual markets is
not only an Inconvenience to them but
entails heavy loss on the merchants accus-
toned to supply them. Is it not wrong to
inaugurate such a revolution lightly Z Must
there not really be some pressing danger
to justify it7
And where is the danger of the present
situation 2 There is as yet no epidemic in
this city, and every little cross road viii
lage hastens to blockade the highway and
embargo the country round about from the
New Orleans trade. Will the baggipg and
ties that might come there be infected
If SO, in what wayf Can consumers not
find agents here who will see that every
thing comes through an uninfected source9
Certainly they can, at least while the fever
is go limited in it's prevalence, and then to
make assurance doubly sure reasonable
fumigation would extjpguish all remnants
of danger. -
Humanity, too, requires that perfectly
healthy people who are fleeing from what
they suppose to be danger, should not be
excluded from all human society under
penalty of the chain gang. A man running
away from danger more imaginary than
real is not like one afflicted with leprosy.
If his clothing be infected, it can be puri-
fed by fumigation, and if latent seeds of
disease in his system should perchance
afterwards ripen into fever, so much the
more reason that resting place be given
him. Humanity would say Don't let him
perish. Put him in some retired place aud
give him skillful nurse. This would pro-
badly save the poor fellows life and en-
danger no one else.
But senseless panic is blind and deaf.
1t no longer sees or appreciates the decent
amenities of life, nor can it hear the ap-
peals of common humanity. 1t sees nothing
but the wild phantoms of it's own imagin-
ing and hears nothing but the frantic de-
mands safety for of its own abject fear.
couple of young ladies just from school
in this city took passage the other day on
one of our river steamers for their fathers
plantation. They heard of the Vicksburg
law and did not land, but what comment
ary ON the chivalry of the city that erst-
while SO gallautly withstood Grant and all
his legiors when we have to say that if
those young ladies had gone ashore to kiss
their mother they would have been liable
to be put into the Vicksburg CHAIN GANG
To such pass do gallant men come when
they once give way to that blindest of all
human extravagance-a panic!