Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1899-03-16
LEGISLATIVE DIGNITY.
An Observer Comments on the Late
'....,.-. D.. Session.

IL Iue average SOutn CarOllnlan
the Legislators &C his State aso moth.
ing more than 80 many Of his fellow
citizens, some of whom he may know
vofyI we'll and others, perhaps, OF
whom he has never heard, who as
semble for SO many days in the year
to frame laws for hia State, 70 retnrn
after q few sessions to the everyday
walks of life. ~. :. r..
But the foreigner, coming from a
country where law. w.making is almost
hereditary and the law maker is in-
vested with dignity and interest
which lifetime devoted to his coun-
try invests him with, is curious to
know how the legislators of this now
commonwealth, with it's ultra demo-
cratic institutions, compare with
those of the country he left behind
and with those of other legislative
assemblies in this sisterhood of
States.
10 the superficial observer tho bal
anco may seem much in favor Of the
older parliamentary bodies of Eu-
rope, but if he will ponder little
and consider from what material the
legislators of the new world arc
taken and the conditions of their en-
vironment, and especially in South
Carolina, he will find that the balance
ia not much in favor of the older
bodies, and may even incline the
other way, for what they may lack in
polish and knowledge of rhetoric is
compensated for by an earnestness
and knowledge of tho wishes of his
constituents that moro than make up
for the lack of the former.
| am not speaking now of the
few college bred men who sit in
the Legislature, but of those who
come from the yeoman and merchant
class, the kind you meet in the ordi-
nary boarding house, who really rep
resent their constituents in all the
name implies, or, to use an old Eng
lish phrase, "know the taste of their
food, and no such representative
body can be found outside of Switz.
erland in any State in Europe, nor is
the Anglo-Saxon character of it's
members so pronounced in any other
legislative assembly in America as is
that of South Carolina, which must
be accounted for by the small influx
Of non English speaking races into
this State. Physically they are ro-
bust and well fed body of men, of a
type well known to readers of Thomas
Nelson Page and Opie Read, some of
whom would closely fit some of the
characters of those writer's.
Much could be written of the indi-
vidual characteristics of many of its
members which would be a. faithful
theme for the pen of a Dickens or o
Thackeray. 1t is a pity that South
Carolina contains no writer who
could hand down to posterity pon
pictures of her statesmen for the
benefit of future generations.
1t was the writer's good fortune to
witness the close of tho last session
and it appeared more like a collec-
tion of college boys about to break
up for the holidays, than an assem-
blage of gray hared Legislators on
whose decisions hang the destines Of
the State. During the short recesses
which occurred from time to time
during tho evening the members
amused themselves by pelting each
other with paper, an amusement in
which even the pages joined with an
ardor that shocked the observant
foreigner, accustomed to the staid
formalities Of an European parlia-
mcnt
Some of the members sang comic
songs, while a band of negro min
strcls added to tho general merri-
ment. Tho wivcs and daughters of
the members seemed to have tho
privileges of tho floors, somo of them
sitting by the side of their husbands,
brothers and sweethcarts, which is
an improvement over the grated gal
lcrics of the House Of Commons.
But there is one old friend we re-
cognize, for there is our old friend,
the mace, perched in oil his brassy
glory beneath the speakers chair,
said to be the very bauble that old
"Noll" bid them remove from West
minister during tho stormy days of
the Stuarts and carried by fleeing
royalist to the plantations of South
Carolina to be rcatored to ita former
dignity in tho Legislative assembly of
the new world. Like all parliament
tary bodies it has its butts and