Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1883-03-06
COL. COLE as a LAWYER

| The plea based upon legal techDicalities,
and bristling with legal quotations, which
was made before Tennessee Legislators and
others at NasAvills last week by Col. s
W. Cole, who is not lawyer, to which the
APPEAL has already given attention, is not
proving any more acceptable elsewhere than
here. Nashville papers are silent upon the
subject; they heard the terrible fulmin A.
tons and denunciaLious OF Col. Cole as to
what would be the dread consequences of
the creation of a railroad conmission in
Tennessee, and are not rashly running into
any awful abyss. The Atlanta Constitution,
| being used to the doiugs of the Georgia Com
mission, whose office is in that city, does not
appear to regard those threats as cause for
alarm. Like the ApPKAL, that paper re-
CARDS the address as indicative of no
very high estimate on the part of
the speaker of Tennessee legisla-
tors ability or common sense, bat it
thinks the speaker can hardly have "looked
upon the members of the Legislature as a
set of asses.p COL Cole laid strong emphasis
upon hiB assertion that to pass a bill
creating . commission for Tennessee rail-
roads would be to doom the wealth Of Ten
nssses's mines, fields, and forests to lie I'M
| developed, as no capitalist would invest Ia
railroads in Slate that had a railroad
commission. Upon this the Corstitutionalia
"tells little story" which 10 that within The
State Of Georgia, where fourishes an honored
IL
Cole himself, after the bill to create the
commission had become Law in Georgia,
added to the extent of the railroads OF that
State by himstlt constructing railroad line
to the port of Brunswick. So that not only
will capitalists build railroads in, State
having a railrosd comu,issi on, but Col. Cole
has done the same thing himself. As
the APPEAL remarked when speaking upon
this subject before, when a man undertakes
to carry on special pleading based upon legal
techpicaltiss, though he himself is not
lawyer, bis argument is not accepted as au-
thority, especially will it fail TO do SO now it
turns out that while The argument is one way
the example is another and contrary way.
Not being lawyer, the able speaker quoted
law where it suited him and left it unquoted
where he did not like it. With gravity
vergisg on the solemn, Col. Cole sho wed how
impossible il is that Tennessee can have an
Efficient railway commission, because the
State had bound her hands on the subjsc, by
coveuanting and agreeing with one or two
roads that they should make their own
charges, providing they did not 70 oyer Ave
cents a mile for passengers and thirty.fvs
cents for hundred pounds of freight. The
colonel not being lawyer did not observe
that that was not law requiring
the companies TO charge five or thirty.6ve
cents, but prohibiting them from charging
those sums, and he therefore omitted to quote
the following from the record OF the very
case he referred TO in proof OF his solennly
urged assurances that the corporation is
power above the State in the matter of its
charges. That quotation, case of Rogan d
Buffet Us. Aiken, is the words of the court
upon the i've and thirty. five cents law, and
is as follews: "The Intention of the L.sis-
lalure was to confer upon each company The
right ts charge, as common carrier, for
freight and passengers carried over its road
or any part Of it; that the intent was not 10
proportion The charge by any unit OF dis
lance, but to fix a msximum beyond which
the company could not 90, and to leave the
tariff OF charges, within the limit, to the
company, subject 10 the rule Of the common
law that the charges should be reasonable,
and TO the regulating power Of the courts
and the Legislature" SHch is the decision
of Tennessee court, and Georgia court
has decided the same matter the same way.
Ga the whole, it is evident that an amateur
lawyer must not be mistaken for profound |
PROFESSIONALISM.