The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1879-02-27
REPUTATION TALK.


VIVA. tho Abbeville Medium Has to Soy
About the News and Courier's Uncalled
for Attack.
aIn fine, such newspapers as the Ander-
son INrELLIGENoEs and Journal, and
the Abbeville Medium, encourage the
people to set themselves above the law"
Such is the extravagant and unfound-
ed charge of the Charleston Ne,cs and
Courier in the course of a late leader on
the condition and prospects of the public
debt problem, made up from beginning
to end of startling absurdities. That the
best and at the same time the most reck-
less newspaper in the State should be so
constantly and so completely the foe Of
the people might be denominated pub
lie calamity. Starting out some years
ago with but single plank in its plat
form, "damn principle, it's the money we
wan" this great newspaper, with singu-
lar persistency and magnificent ability,
has pursued its course unmoved by the
threats of the hour, unabashed in the
face of its detection. Itiis not at all
strange that it should now be on the side
of our enemies, who want to force the
State to Pay debt she never contracted,
from which she has never derived the
slightest good and which she does not
owe by any rule of law or equity. This
is the way the Charleston censor makes
its living. First for Chamberlain, then
against him; check by jowl with Gun
ningham, the butcher mayor, then
against him; first here, then there, then
e7erywhere-such has been the erratic
course of newspaper which now as ever
defames everybody and everything pre-
summing to stand up against the injustice
and absolute wrong sought by it to be so
carelessly and foully pushed upon the
people.
There has been talk of reputation in
the State, and there is now, but nobody
should know the mind of the Supreme
Court on the bonded debt. If the public
debt was not created in accordance with
law, if it was not put upon the market as
required by law, lis not just or lawful
obligation of the State, and should be
finally and forever repudiated. If it is
mixed or tainted with fraud it should be
examined and sifted to the bottom, the
bad thrown out and the good paid. Such
was thu recommendation of Governor
Hampton in his first message to the Leg
islature, in which he said such investiga-
ton shall be "a condition precedent to
the payment" &C., and such is the hon.
est judgment of every honest man in the
State. IF in their unholy zeal, to fatten
upon the poverty of this PROSTATE State,
the bondholders are suffered to shape the
financial policy and act as the disbursing
agents of the government, if those who
hold good claims allow their securities to
be put upon no higher level than the
"tissue paper" held by spectators and
frauds, then they deserve to lose their
money, and the State should say 80 most
emphatically. II the good bondholdels
conspire with the bad bondholders
against the State, they are parties to the
fraud, and equally undeserving help or
sympathy. When Governor Hampton
took charge of the State government in
1876, he was confronted by many grave
and desperate complications of our pub
lie afairs-a disheartened people, stout
enemy and an empty treasury. He
found the money market flooded with
fraudulent and questionable securities,
and, in order to do justice by all parties,
the people who made him their ruler as
well as the spectators who held State
paper, he directed q complete and Impair
tial investigation of the whole matter,
the payment of the uneuestionably valid
debt Of the State and the reputation Of
all that to which the slightest suspicion
of fraud attached. The investigation
was made, the fraud discovered to the
finest fraction, and now it is proposed to
throw out every bond tainted with fraud
and pay the just and valid debt of the
State-"only this and nothing MORE"
eff this is treason, make the most of it'll"
If the good bond holders are not satisfied
with such, d settlement of the public debt,
they are in league with those who hold
the fraudulent securities, and deserve no
better at, tho hands Of the people than
the swiIdlers who would steal.the good
name of the State as they have also
stolen her money. No man can help a
fraud along without becoming party to
the fraud, aud repudiation, full, complete
and absolute, is the only method by
which the madness of these men can be
cured. If the good and bad bondholders
are sailing on the same craft, why let the
magazine be lighted and the whole wreck
go down together. This is what blind
Sampson did when he made sport for his
captors, and this is what South Carolina
will be forced to do if she listens to the
intemperate talk of such enemies of pub
lie good as the .Meps and Courier.
Our Charleston contemporary hits very
wide of the mark when it says that we
would encourage the people to set them
selves above the law" Never was accu-
sation more unjust or more wholly un!
warranted by existing facts. There is
not q more orderly and law-abiding peo-
pie in the State or the South than the
people of Abbeville. They do all of
their duties as good citizens with deep
and exalted patriotism altogether unlike
the time-serving policy of our low-coun-
try neighbor. There is no opposition to
the full exercise Of the law or finding of
the courts-what the country wants is
that the courts be allowed to make up
their own judgment without any pro-
phetlc aid from the rings and their allies.
THE CULTURE OF CABBAGE.-Many
persons complain that they cannot have