National Republican., 1884-02-28
A Troublesome Dogma.

The old doctrine of state rights has OBJ
truded itself upon congress at the present
session with extraordinary pertiuacity.
Singulary enough, the representatives of tho
this doctrine as absolutely essential to the
preservation of liberty have been obliged to
trample 1t under foot whenever it traversed
their local interests. 1t was held by the
democratic statesmen of the past generation
that the federal government could not cxer--
else any authority in state or perform any
strict letter of the constitution. There is not
n word in the constitution that gives the
general government authority to go into
state and build levees TO protect riparian
land owners from floods. Yet, as q matter
of fact the government is expend-
ing something like $5OOO,OOO year
and Louisiana, and when it was feared that
flood might come before the works were
sufficiently completed to resist it, a special
appropriation ofa million of dollars was asked
for to meet the emergency. When this
advance appropriation was under considera.
ton in the house thS representatives of tho
wero twitted with their desortion Of the old
doctrine, but they took no notice of the
taunts and voted for the bill
There is nothing in the constitution which
authorizes the federal government to protect
the states from the inroads Of contagious
cattle diseases, or to pay the owners of ami.
mails for the losses incurred in stamping out
the infection, yet large number of demo.
cratic representatives from tho north,
as well as from the south, are
anxious that the government should
provide the machinery for resisting the spread
OF the cattle plague and pay for the losses oc-
casioned thereby. Some Of the state rights
men set up the old theory in opposition to the
pending bill, but their constitutional scruplcs
were remorselessly ridiculed. When tho floods
came month ago, and the raging waters Of
the Ohio river brought poverty and dosola-
tion to many homes, there was loud call
upon the federal government for aid. The
strict constructionists from kentucky and
West Virginia made no objection to tho ap-
preparation Of a large sum of money to feed
the hungry and clothe the naked in their
own states, although they made no pretense
of finding warrant for the exercise of any
such authority in the letter of the constitu-
tiOn.
The recent cyclones in North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Georgia have caused an
other demand to be made upon the bounty of
the federal government. The same constitu-
tional objections can be made to federal aid
in either case; but, somehow or other, the
state rights men have managed to smother
their scruples and vote for the appropriations.
Humanity and supreme necessity transcend
the letter of the constitution.
In view Of the action Of the state rights
men in making the federal government dis
penser of charity to citizens of the states
who have suffered from floods and storms,
how can they object to afrording aid to those
who lost everything through the murderous
violence of organized mobs? A Mississippi
storm is not SO pitiless as Mississippi mob.
The people whose houses wore overturned by
the cyclones are not so utterly wrotched and
destitute as the people who have been driven
from their homes in Copiah county, Mssis-
sippi, by murder, arson, and remorseles5
social and political prescription.