The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1879-11-13
A sLAsHINe plcTUnE-n,KEa.

II is easy to draw picture OF what
a country should be. Bat States are
OF slow growth. They are Dot made
in one or fifty or even in hundred
years. 1t Is easy to say that these new
commemorative Of the Snu esd West
should have q school house and church
In every township and pretty villages
everywhere along interminable rail-
ways. Men incapable of thinking
might ascribe to lswgivers OF the South
differences fu5sisting between the
Southwest and Northeast, or between
Texas and Kansas. To the extent
that Southern party -lesders are respon-
sible for losses and calamities resulting
from the war between the States, to
the extent that the North made and
gained and We lost every thing, to the
extent that the North was profited and
the South plundered and desolated, to
that extent Kansas has outstripped
Texas In progressive civilization. Kan
sas boasts of very proper free school
system, and we.only know that, except
in villages, Texas, because of sparse
ness off population and magnificent
distances, cannot have or maintain
such a system. II Omnipotence reared
these pretty structures that exist in the
minds eye of the Telegram, everywhere
as proposed, this dreamer and euthu-
siast, who condemns Governor Roberts
because the schools do not exist, Gould
not supply one single bawling brat to
become the. beneficiary of the impossi-
BILE universal free school system. 1t.
Is well enough for idiots to prate
about what ought to be when it cannot
be. We only know what will be if
some unwise or corrupt Legislature
do not part with the fee in school
and university land. When Texas and
the South have recovered from the loss
of nine thousand millions of property
and labor, brought upon US by war re-
suits; when the African is as produc-
tive, intelligent and progressive as the
Northern white man; when his head is
elongated instead of round when white
population, per square mile, in Texas,
is as great as IN Kansas, and the rela-
tive wealth of the two peoples the
same; then will it be possible for some
successor of Governor Roberts to con-
template the splendid churches, VII
lagos and school houses created with
such wondrous ease and suddenness by
our puffy Houston contemporary.
When a Houston editor or
plying stranger from away down
East asks an innocent herdsman
or ranchero of Texas why we
have, and can have no free school
system, let him confess the poverty of
the people and sparseness of popu-
lation and that the bare proposition to
value the land of Texas for taxation at
fifty cents per acre almost excites re.
volt while it is worth So in Kansas.
Let the ranchero further say that land
is the ultimate source of all State rev.
enues. Legislatures when taxing other
property and products are only delud-
ing inn ocent land-holdIng constituents.
Taxation, in it's last analysis, is the
life-blood of the farmer. A direct tax
of one-half per cent. and indirect tax
alton of double this amount by
courts and other machinery of
government is already fastened upon
these land-owning producers, and
we have to say to those exceeding
good people, so desperately afflicted
with the free school craze, that bur-
dens of taxation will be diminished,
perhaps half, by the next Legislature.
Governor Roberts pays as he goes. He
is no frantic, loose enthusiast or VIOLA
tile dreamer, like the. picture-msker OF
futurity at Houston. The Governor
proposes to lessen public burdens to
such an extent that, as in the olden
time, these will be unfelt. Then prop
erty will advance in value and pretty
villages be born and free people, hav-
ing indefeasible homesteads and thus
attached to the very soil of the State
by irrefragable bonds of interest and
affection, will suffer neither church
nor State to educate their offspring.