The sea coast echo. [volume] (Bay Saint Louis, Miss.) 1892-current, 1900-03-24
PURGE REGISTRATION ROLLS.
Legislature Took wise and Effect
uai Step to Nip the Demagogue.

uai Step to Nip the Demagogue.
JACKSON, Miss, March Is
Correspondence \. o. Picayune).
The Legislature made it easy for
the boards of supervisors topurge
the registration books of the
names of persons who have no
right to be there. Itpassed bill
requiring tax collectors to publish
list of all persons delinquent for
poll taxes after the first day of
February in each year. When this
list is made out the boards of sup
erviSors, charged by law with re-
gistration and ordering of new
ones, may direct the registrar to
strike from the pollbooks the
names of all the tax dellnquents.
AS matters have stood, registra-
ton is farce. In some counties
in the State the poll books con-
tain more delinqnents than they
do taxpayers, and the number of
delinquents Is constantly growing.
The act above referred to,
which will, on account of its ge-
neral Importance, be found below,
was believed by the Legislature a
healthful measure, in that it
would publicly announce to the
taxpay ers of the several counties
of the State in cold type, in al
phabetical order, the names of
men who are so recreant to pub
lie duty as to skirk their poll tax,
thus deliberately disfranchising
themselves, but are loud-mouthed
around the primaries, where they
are invited by lawIess executive
committees to participate in no.
limitations, which in Mississippi
are equivalent to elections, but
may not be so long, if such nomi-
nations are to be made by men who
do not contribute to the support
Of government, and who are inn
potent at the polls to cast SIM
gle vote for the ticket they may
have nominated in the primaries.
There is already talk among tax
paying Democrats that this sort
of thing is monstrous. and, if
persisted in, they may decline to
participate in such primaries, but
nominate ticket of their own
and elect it at the polls, where
delinquent taxpayers are not per-
mitted to vote.
They say that the revolutionary
fathers rebelled against taxation
without representation, and they
are tired of representation with
out taxation.
The sentiment of the State is
unquestionabIy for purer, better
politics. The demagogue does
not want to be shotn of the
strength that is given him in pri-
maries by the delinquent taxpay-
er. The demagogue and the de-
linqnent taxpayers are natural af-
finities. The only thing that
keeps the demagogue from be-
coming a delinquent himself is
that the Constitution fOrbids
the holding of an Office by
a delinquent taxpayer. And the
office of candidate is the chief
vocation of the demagogue. Rob
him of that constitutional right,
and he would sorrowfully quote
the lines that occur in the dirge
of McClung, written just before
his nervous finger touched the
hair trigger of the pistol that sent
a bullet through his tortured
brain:
The fading hues OF hope have fed, like the Dol
phins light,
And dark are the clouds above my head as the
starless night"
The poet Hemans tells us that
leaves have their times to fall, and
flowers to wither. The knife that
severed the ligament between Eng
and Sheng brought dissolution.
The law that sewers the demago-
que from the delinquent may kill
the demagogue and make better
citizens of the delinquent, some
Of whom are not wholly bad, and
had rather pay their poll tax than
have their names printed so that
their neighbors can frame them
in Grape, and leave them a fixed
figure for the time Of scorn to
point his slow, unmoving finger
at. The demagogue had as we'll
get ready to go. The day Of his
destiny, in the language of Byron,
is over, and the star of hope has
declined. The State that builds
million dollar capitols, establishes
textile schools, enacts better pub,
lie road laws, appropriates $4,000,
600 at clatter for the malnten-
ance of the common school~-a
State that is building cotton mills
will no longer dissemble its love
for him, but Is getting ready to
kick him downstairs.