The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1911-04-13

me newspaper clipping that he in
formed me was an editorial from the
Fort Worth, Tex, Record, accusing me
of the horrible and revolving crime OF
inconsistency, that "bugaboo of little
minds" Private letters also from
Texas have come to this town warning
timid folk of my awful perversity in
this behalf.
1t seems that Senator Joseph w
Bailey, some years ago, made speech
on the judicial power" nominated in
the Federal Constitution, and it chal
lenged my attention and extorted my
admiration. | had no hesitancy in
complimenting the mental endow-
ments and legal attainments of the
Senator, and / still say it was great
speech and worthy to rank with those
of our eminent constitutional lawyers,
few of whom ever dealt with legal
question in a way that was not Greek
to me, though some forty years ago |
was a ''near-lawyer" myself. I also
said that Mr.. Bailey must be man of
force to substitute his idea of near"
tariff protection for the splendid De-
| mocracy of R. @. Mills, and make it go
down in Texas and in the South, or
words of that import
But does my admiration of Bailey as
lawyer estop me. from challenging
the heresy Mr.. Bailey deals out as a
statesman? l trow not. What said
of Bailey on the judicial power, and
on the tariff, as well, might have found
precedent in Shakespeare:
Respect to your great place! and let
the devil
Be sometime honor'd for his burning
throne"
l care nothing for consistency when
it conflicts with conviction, and l
would write what l believe today
though it contradicted everything I
believed and all 1 wrote yesterday, and
would not give a snap of my finger
for newspaper, or a journalist, that
would not do as do in that particular.
I have no patience with those newspa-
pers edited by the money downstairs
rather than by the brains upstairs.
Their preachments are fiimsy, fiatu-
lent, vapid, insipid colorless, con-
temptible, infamous, and their owners
are sycophants and towards, liars and
slaves. What my mind FORCES and my
conscience approves my pen will write
and it will write none else. Thank
God there are brave newspapers in the
land and they illustrate all that Thorn
as Jefferson meant by free press.
But this time I am innocent of in
consistency. I still say that Mr..
Bailey's speech on the judicial power,
whether it is sound or not, is a great
effort, and | still believe and | now
say that Mr.. Bailey's stand on the
tariff will make Texas a Republican
State, if Texas follows him, As we'll
eat the devil as to drink his broth.
And speaking of consistency, what
is Mr.. Bailey's record on that? Will
liam M. Springer, Democrat from
Springfield, ILL.,, was Chairman of the
Committee of Ways and Means of the
Fifty-second Congress, of which body
Joseph w. Bailey was member. Mr..
Springer assailed the tariff in detail.
He brought in numerous bills that he
Republicans, in derision, called pop
guns,p and each of them put raw
material on the free list. The first
was wool, and at that time Texas was
a wool state. Did Mr.. Bailey oppose
1t? No, he swallowed free wool, free
lumber, free coal, and everything else
free that Springer set before him.
Nor is that all. In the next succeed
ing Congress the Wilson bill was
gorged with free raw materials as it
passed the House of Representatives,
and Mr.. Bailey supported it, though
a score or so of half-baked Democrats
voted against it. So, if the Fort
Worth Record would scald man for
inconsistency let it chase Mr.. Bailey
out of the woods.
Morrison and Carlisle, Mills and
Wilson, all held that free raw ma
terials is the A B G of tariff reform.
And mark you, West Virginia, whence
hailed William L. Wilson, is an enor-
nous producer of coal, lumber and
wool. Kentucky grows more hemp
than all the other states together;
but Democratic Kentucky voted free
hemp, pure raw material, because to
tax it imposed an additional burden
on the man growing cotton in Texas.
And Texas ought to be honest enough