The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1881-07-30
The Typical Criminality.

The Typical Criminality.
The Washington correspondent OF the
New York Times continues to dish up
the :" Star-route" criminality. He says:
The Postmaster General, finding on every
hand evidence of corruption and reckless ex-
travagauce. looks through the reforms OF the
pi esent to the realization of dream OF self
sustaining Department and cheaper postage
in the near future. Energetic suDordinateS
gather evidence which will overwhelm the
guilty. 1t is hard for one who gains insight
Into these records and who studies the history
of previous investigdt ons TO escape the belief
that the Post-otice department has been a
sink of iniquity for years. 1t will be no easy
task to compute the amount OF the people
money stolen or thrown away.
Not only the Post-otfice Department,
but nearly every other Department I'M
der the Government has been the scene
of wholesale peculation. This is not
strange. Time and again the country
party, "YOu are only clever and
thrifty; we take no stock in the stories
affecting your good name: they are only
campaign POWDER go ahead-we are
with you" So the party has come to
imagine itself the ow'aer of the country
in fee simple--and should it not make
all the money there is in it?" The
"Star-route' crimes ought to wake up
the public to the real nature of the
party that has rioted in power so
long; for they are little the plain
est, most palpable, most OPEN
handed robberies yet brought to light.
They will enable the most bigoted Repub-
lican to see that the charges made
against his party SO steadily, since 1872
especially, were something more than
campaign talk. Indeed the crimes OF
the party have become as vulgar and
tangible IS horse stealing and pocket
picking; and the bigoted Republican
sees it. Does he still think the party
worthy the support of good menp Can
he still say that honesty is the rule and
crime the exception in the Republican
party--that the criminals are a lot of
low fellows whom it is only necessary to
kick out to make every thing roll on as
''merry as a marriage bell?' We doubt
it, for he will encounter this fact in the
very beginning that the Republican
candidate for President, and the party
managers generally, were lin cahoots"
with the leaders of this "Star route"
villainy, and drew freely on their guilty
bank account for campaign money.
Thus we have the criminal and ere
spectacle elements of Radicalism
linked together indissolubly! There is
no getting out of it: the partnership has
been established by indubitable episto-
larry proof. There is much show now of
hunting down and furnishing the scoun-
drels. So far as Postmaster-G General
/ 10 -.
grant an honesty of purpose. MIR.
James is an honest man and a reform
er in the true sense; but will he be
permitted to carry out his programme
to the bitter end? We shall be very
glad. for the good of the public service,
If he be so permitted; but we are in
credulous. The Republican tenure is
SO interviewer with, and dependent
upon, official rascality that the party
can hardly ''go back ON its thrifty
ones in dead earnest. We can under
stand that the work of exposure and
prosecution may 60 so far that it can
not be stopped without confession
and admission too revolving for even
Radical assurance; but the work of re-
form has not progressed that far yet.
We trust the Republican Administra-
ton may yet be driven into these des-
perate straits. The tide is drifting in
that direction now. 1t will be bright
day for the country when the party OF
corruption stands forth naked in all its
criminality, and there be no one to do
it further reverence. The correspon-
dent of the Times says lit will be no
easy task to compute the amount of
money stolen or thrown away" by this
one syndicate of thievery in the Repub-
lican party. 1t is no doubt past compu-
tation; and when we come to add the
"Star-route" frauds to the other inter-
minable frauds that have depleted the
popular pocket, from Grants dis
graceful regime down to the present.
what an appalling aggregate of robbery
do we obtain! A nice party for "busi-
ness mems" clubs; a nice party for the
honest and the hard-fisted; nice party
for moral and respectable people; nice
party for young men to join and grow
up with nice party for ministers
and college professors, and all other
moral and physical instructors of youth;
a nice party to serve as an exemplar
of the benefices and beauties of Re-
publicanism; nice party to assume the
possession of ''all the morality and all
the respectability;'' nice party to
ground itself upon decency and hon
esty! General James is said to have at
first looked hopefully to an honest and
beneficent public service in the future;
but we imagine he has ere now despaired
OF accomplishing any thing durable
under tie dominance of the Republican
party. First the storm; then the puri-
fed atmosphere and the smiling land
scals. Cleveland Plaindeaier.