The comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1884-1916, 1891-10-29

rage within. Sooner or later, the strife
growing out of this unnatural relation
will lift the crust, and the fearful en-
gineery of its unclaimed forces will
fill the land with dismal woe and ruin.
Not so, may say the ardent patriot,
"away with such brood of horrors"
But still his hope may not be worth
the pebble in the schoolboy's sling. 1t
may soon be lost star wandering in
the blacklist night of tempest and
cloud, James Buchanan went into the
Presidency amid the smiles of univer-
sal peace, and when his term ended
sectional hate was on the throne, and
tina North and the South, two mon
sters gorged with the hellbroth of pas
sion, clutched each by the throat
A quarter of a century ago, the
slavery question engulfed this nation
in blood and entombed the flower of
its mani God. There were as many
patriots then as now, and may be far
more, and they were powerless to
avert the crime, next to the crime on
Calvary,which turned this fairest land
under the sun into apandemonium,
where brotherwent tohis death overt the
corpse of brother, and father and son
sank to the reeking earth with bayo-
nets transfxed in each Others hearts,
and from the Gulf to the Lakes and
from Maine to the placid ocean on
the west was a vast charnel house.
The portents of mighty CONFUSION
are as orninous now as they were three
months before the Southern Hotspurs
sent the first thunderbolt OF the war
through the "Star of the West" in
Charleston harbor. If it does come,
it will not assume the form and fash
ion OF the war-model of '61-'65, with
armies marching and fighting to soul
stirring music over large areas of
country, with cities beleaguered, har-
bors blockaded and parapets frowning
with the iron monsters of havoc and
death. 1t will not be a naval engage
ment of Monitors and Merrimacs. 1t
will be here, there and everywhere. 1t
will be Saint Bartholomew expression
Of the fiery communism of frenzied
populace, where manufacturers lock
their doors against wage earners,
without bread in their houses or
money in their pockets, to limit pro-
duction and maintain prices )" where
goldbugs, to increase their millions,
contract the currency, PROSTATE in
dustry and then turn enforced idle
ness from their marble palaces with
out even o crust where the grain
dealers store up Gods blessings for all
His creatures safe "from the hands OF
the starving and poor" and where
the "Four Hundred" are enthroned in
the barbaric gold and purple of inn
perial splendor amid myriad squalid
nests of misery and misfortune.
This menace is the legacy OF the
evils and mischiefs stranded upon lis
by the war. In its widespread de-
moralization, affecting. all classes,
sitting honest impulses and deadening
the popular conscience, a few men
made at that time fabulous fortunes
without any inquiring into the ques-
tionable methods Of its acquisition.
Ever since the war, the lobby has
dictated legislation, and the legisla-
ton has been SO fashioned as to build
up an oligarchy Of robber barons,
whose capaclous extortions have
brought the people to the
verge of bankruptcy and want, and
whose patent Of exclusive privileges has
so added to their riches, that the most
expert cashier could not count the
wealth of anyone of them, by single
dollars, in an ordinary lifetime. The
people are between the tiger and the
wolf, with all means of escape cut off
NewEngland farmers abandoning Their
) homes, the fertile regions of the West
, blanketed with mortgages, the cities
: filled with starving millions who car
get no employment, corners" on al
: the necessaries OF life, the few SO ricl
7 that their wealth is an exhausting bur
/ den, the South the only bright spot il
| the dark picture where the hant
! Of toll can pluck decent living from
: raptious greed, the nation can no
g stand the strain Of this unnatural lifC
forever.
. A REIMBURSEMENT must.come, and tina
soon. Enchanting the people from
) debasing and impoyefishing seryitud
i to the avarice of the money power, ant
: putting the letters Of u wholesome re
o strcGon upon the few who hay
!, corded it" over distress and penur
u with all the heartess arrogance an
Q despotism Of Russian Gar
l. Whether this REIMBURSEMENT be tn
n outcome Of the peaceful forces Of tina
j divine equity, which alone recos
+" Mics the democracy of the huma
g race, Of a bloody uprising Of people t
e frenzy wrought and appealing to al
e. archy and communism to restore tn
A God given tights arrested from ther
is by the ruthless hands of the "proteci
n ed spoiler, is the difficult problem col
n fronting the craftsmanship OF the pre-