Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1879-07-18
Whllher Are We Drininr.

oe SANDER TO afhrm that we arc
pelng held IN durance vile BY a selfish
class OF knaves and egotists. who IN
der the protecting shadow of their nro.
fesslonal garb would work us ruin
and that 1t is under the supremacy Of
tnelr august power alone that we are
suffering. | do not assert that this
reproach is peculiarly applicable to us
Tor our experience of the past week
has shown that among our neighbor-
ing towns and cities, nay, all the wide
land over, Mammon, the god of selfish
ness, holds sway supreme, where mercy
and charity would groyel in the dust
Of despair.
The action of the boards of health
OF our sister cities in quarantining
against US, upon mere shadowy suspi-
cion, is simply the grandest display of
egregious imbecility that ever dis
graced a civilized nation and disgusted
an observant world. That such idiotic
heartlessness is but the spasmOdic
conclusions of men blind to the
wants Of humanity, and dead to
the petitions Of mankind, is
too palpable fact to admit of criti-
cism, That boards of health" and
official doctors = who s.sume tie
prerogatives of establish quaran-
tines are only making a iamentable
display of their ignorance and ungodly
seltishness, mas been proven beyond
the shadow of doubt. The deserv
ing statement uttered by the New Or
leans Times few days ago, is gilded,
invulnerable truth, and should be re-
echoed by every honest medium of the
press throughout the length and
breadth of this dissenting land: "The
conviction is we'll nigh universal that
yellow fever will come and spread
whenever and wherever the conditions
favor it and the sanitary surroundings
invite it, and altogether without re-
gard to the petty barriers of a doc
tor s quarantine. That our city is
now under the reign of cruel despot-
ism, oppressed by martial law, is a
painful realization. Could we but
hurl the shafts and arrows of our su-
preme contempt at these barberous
despots could we but pile up our
maledictions as high as the heavenly
zenith upon the God -forsaken heads
OF such heathenish, narrow -souled
idiots, our honest indignation would
then be shadowed forth only in the
feeblest and lamest of terms.
Where are we drifting? Under this
villainous coercion where will we land?
The prOgnosis from such gangrenous
state of insufferable ignorance and
beastly inhumanity must be unfavor-
able-nay fatal. And what are the
anticipated results? Are we not sus-
pended upon the brink of financial
peril? And now and then as the
years roll on in the future, when the
yellow king starts into our midst to
reap his ghastly harvest, and we
would escape the wrath of his deadlG
scythe, must we be beaten back into our
poisoned homes by inhuman wretches
who proclaim themselves men, fash
iOned in the image of God and be
made to die like the prisoners in the
black hole of Calcutta? Unless our
people rise up and declare their inal-
icenable rights, we are absolutely ire
trievably ruined. Already some of our
most enterprising, but timid-minded
citizens, are discouraged. A few
more years of such outrages and a
vortex Of oblivion will threaten us.
The most prudent will begin to con-
tract their enterprises, and by degrees
TO abandon an uncertain career. In
proportion as these attacks are re-
peated, and the system Of oppression
assumes an habitual character, the
dispersion augments; those who have
fed are not replaced, and those who re-
main inevitably fall into a state of
languor. 1t is thus that after time
the field Of industry, being beaten
down by storms, becomes at last a
desert. Talk to a high functionary Of
our city government, of our board Of
health, OF our chamber of commerce,
about the dark and lowering
sky that obscures the star of
our destiny, of the forkep
lightnings of national oppression that
thwart the welkin and glare the start
ling eye of the rumbling thunders of
dissolution, that shake our hearth
stones and threaten to rend in twain
the very foundation of our prosperity,
of the probable fate of our happy city
going as some others have gone
through past ages, and with firm be-
lief he will respond. as is usual for our
deluded people to do, that .Ourcity has
never fallen: that it has growing
strength that must endure forever.
Poor, misguided philanthropistl AS
truthfully might he have said " |.
have never died Of yellow fever, and
therefore | shall never die. Where
are numberless cities that have had
their rise. usOgress and power through
past ages? Where is proud Babylon,
with her hanging gardens and tower
ing walls, her Nimrods and her mighty
men of fame? Where is Ralbee,
Ninevah, Tyre and Eydon, and the
monuments of art and industry that
characterized the day of their glory Z
They, like Sparta, Athens and Rome,
with all their e6llgent grandeur, have
been crushed and crnmbled by the
relentless hand of oppression and des-
potism. Their downfall cannot be
attributed to those remote causes,
civil wars, inyasions, the scourges and
plaques; these might have dissipated
tho wealth, put the arts to fight, and
swallowed up the prosperous enter
prlses, but the ports would have
been roopened. the eommuni-
cations re-established, the manufac.
tories revived, the towns rebuilt, and
all these rayages repaired in time,
If the men had continued to be men
and their mother country bad extend,