New Iberia enterprise. (New Iberia, La.) 1885-1902, 1899-07-15
THE RAYVILLE MISTAKE.

NOW tlaC the H0yVnle meeting is OV0l
and we have learned, in detail, the scheme
to plunge the State into the maelstrom OF
a bitter and vituperative personal cam
paign, the time has come to speak plainly
tfn[hep tH the pe9p1s . Of houisiana Of the ndefsn
to the Democratic party it involves.
With the leaders who have embarked in
this perilous political venture we shall
seek no quarrel. For Senator Caffery and
Mr.. Boatner we entertain the higheit per-
sonal respect Both have served the
State with great and distinguished ability
and their party with answering fidelity
and conspicuous courage and if they
have enlisted in this misguided movement
| with their eyes open, their mistake, we
| believe, has been out of the head and not
out of the heart. But neither Mr.. Caffery
nor Mr.. Boatner, however disinterested
and patriotic their motives may be, can
| champion a cause so shallow without at
the same time imperiling the supremacy
of the party whose best interests they
profess to have deeply at heart, and un-
less they eau present more cogent reasons
for their faith than are contained in the
Rayville addresses, we do not believe
they can succeed in their attempt to dis
credit before the people of Louisiana the
highly creditable administration of Gov
ernOr Foster.
1t is charged that the Governor has
built up in the State machine to per-
petuate his friends in power and that in
doing so he has had recourse to methods
tending to stife freedom of political
speech and act Senator Caffery and Mr..
Boatner have brought forward no evidence
to sustain the accusation. They have
simply attacked system that has pre-
vailed iu Louisiana for quarter Of a
century, in the Inauguration of which
Governor Foster has had no share and in
the application of which he has only fol-
lowed in the footsteps of the illustrious
executives who preceded him. These
methods came to him just as they were
originally bequeathed by the Republican
administrations that originated them, and
if it be true they put into the hands of the
Executive an antocratic power dangerous
to free institutions and menace to. popu
lar government, it is the Democratic
party and not Governor Foster that must
be held responsible because they have not
been wiped from the statute books. If in
their application Governor Foster has
erred he has not erred wantonly, and his
methods are not more seriously to be repro
bated than those of his distinguished
predecessors. During his term the patron
age of his high Office has been materially
curtailed by the transfer to the people of
the right to choose their own police jurors
"a measure strongly urged by him in
message to the Legislature and if it be
true that the present machinery vests the
Executive with q measure of supervision
of elections, it must be remembered that
the new laws have been an improvement
on the old and that where formerly there
was a Capitalization of the returning
board power, to-day there is wider and
a wiser distribution of that responsibility
and authority Nor have the leaders of
this Independent movement the advantage
of Governor Foster in their denunciation
of the machinery within his control. In
their general sense the views of Mr.. CAT
fiery and Mr. Boatner are at one with those
of the Governor himself He appreciates
as clearly as do his critics the imperfec-
tions Of the system and it is unjust and
unreasonable to. deny to him the same
patriotic and disinterested motives which
his opponents reserve to themselves. II
the system of many years has not been
suddenly abandoned and another substi-
tuted within the last eighteen months,
surely the wrath of the State ought not to
be visited alone upon the head of the
present occupant of the Governors chair
The ink with which the new suffrage
article was written in the constitution is
scarcely dry, there has been no practical
demonstration of its provisions, and yet it
is demanded that the Governor shall be
drawn and quartered and east down from
his high place because he has not been
| able singlehanded to smash to atoms the
we'll creased machine bequeathed to US by
a corrupt radical gang and perfected with
consummate mechanical skill by the sew
eral administrations into whose hands it
has passed since Democracy again came
into power. Let US, therefore, be frank
| among ourselves and let US not 1emorse
lessly gibbet the unwilling instrument
of system in the construction of which