Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1881-04-05
The Issue Before Us.
The State of Saturday week contained
the following leading editorial, which

, worthy of due confederation -
1.-THE issue in our approaching State
lection must be sharply defined and
Malone and his followers made to toe
he line from first to last. Whatever he |
md his immediate henchmen may have |
)een In the past, or pretended to be, Is |
! matter Of very small consequence,
Iince we know what they are now and
where to find them in the future. He
was Democrat, or Conservative, but is
70 no longer, and all who continue faith
Jul to him must be included in the same
of faithlessness to former party
Affiliations. Under the pretext of sin
he cannot escape from the
odium of having betrayed those who
trusted him as Democrat, and voted
for him to represent them In the Senate
Of the United States, nor can he evade
the grave charge of stealing into his
position as Senator under false pretences
and through false representations. Sup.
preston of the truth for the purpose of
or misleading the people is as
great an offence against good morals as
the assertion of falsehOod for the same
purpose, and when he declined to an
swer the interrogatories of the gentle
men in the Virginia House Of Delegates,
seriously and sincerely propounded, and
refused to say whether he would vote
with the Democrats in the Senate he
was guilty of concealment that con-
tanned all the ingredients of prevarica-
ton and deception for even admitting
that most of those Conservatives who
voted for him knew his ultimate inten-
ton in that respect, it was not SO with
the great mass of the Conservative peo-
pie of the State, who, misled by the
declarations of his friends and support
tiers during the canvass, believed that
he was juet as good q Democrat as the
best, and only differed from others in
his party-from Col. Withers, for exam
ple-on the question of the settlement
Of the debt, because that was the sole
matter on which they differed. Gen.
Malone and the majority of the men
elected to the General Assembly on the
Readjuster ticket knew very well that
had they proclaimed in advance that
the first act of the Legislature would be
to form coalition with the negro Re-
publicans in order to turn out all the
Conservative officers. including judges
of the courts, in the State, and fill their
places with their own supporters. and
elect senator in Congress to represent
them in place of their then Democratic
senator, whose first act would be to de-
clare his afiiliation with the Republican
party. does any one in his senses sup
pose for moment that any respectable
number of Conservatives or Democrats
would have voted for them? There
fore, the whole people of the State were
most shamefully hoodwinked and de-
luded by the game of deception these
an v,,,f In nfioo ond oy,oaouofl1 III "
carried out. And that they have been
fully awakened to this fact was seen
very plainly when the pretended cleo
toral ticket for Hancock and English
was placed in the field, and utterly re-
pudiated by the Conservative voters,
who defeated it by q vote of more than
three to one, aud carried the State for
the Democratic ticket in spite of the
combined efforts of the Malone party
and the Radical party to defeat it.
This same system of organized decep-
ton was to have been persisted in and
carried out during the canvass this sum-
mer and fall, and might have been as
successful in misleading the people in
the rural districts as 1t proved two years
ago but for the timely exposure forced
upon Malone in the Senate by Mr..
Hill. Had it not been for the bold and
determined course of that senator, who
assumed tho responsibility of tearing of
his disguise-of unriddling the sphinx
he might still have "wired in and OUT
| through the whole extra session, and
left our people wholly in doubt whether
he was going to or from the Radical
camp. But Hill tore the mask from his
face in no gentle manner, and in his rage
Malone admitted all, boosted the full ex.
tent of his treason to his party, and stood
forth a confessed as well as convicted
traitor. We do not say traitor to his few
hundred personal supporters, for to them
and their selfish purposes he is still true
but we emphatically declare that against
the people of Virginia who he claims
elected him to the place to represent
them, their sentiments and interests, he
has been guilty of a treason most wilfu]
order to make good our assertion we
impeach him before the bar of public
| opinion and hale him for trial in No
vember next. It is no longer question
of the State debt, but of treachery to
the conservative people of the State,
and to prevent the full contamination
| we call upon all Conservatives and
Democrats to prepare at once for the
contest which has been forced upon
them by the course of this man. 1t
will not do to daily with this matter,
but it must be met, and that vigorously
and the people must give him to under
stand once and for all that he nor any
other man in the Commonwealth can
be allowed to use the rabble for the pur.
pose of subjecting the better classes to
his yoke and give him control of the
whole machinery of our Government,
that he may make of it the instrument
of his own pitiful ambition and purposes
of revenge.
Let no one among US from this out be
permitted to plead ignorance of the real
motives and intentions of this faction,
for he cannot honestly do SO, but let US
hold each to strict accountability who
shall with open eyed perfidy assist these
men in carrying out their shameful
scheme for the degradation of the white
race in Virginia and the completion Of
its social. political, and material ruin"