Year: 1876

achieve purposes of which they talk so lust
lily, let them go to the bottom of the diff
Guilty ard so shape local governments and
municipal institutions that they may deserve
the confidence of European people and cap
italists. Sane men will never seek homes
or invest money in town governed by a
non ontaxpaying white or black mob. Mem
phis and many other hapless cities illustrate
in steady decay this unpalatable truth, and
however beautifully the eloquent preacher or
his coterie of benevolent good people may
assert the supreme excellence of soil, de-
lights of Southern latitudes and benefcence
and sweetness of the breath of the gulf
stream, it is wholly in vain until perfect
local freedom is reconciled with honest
local government; and the two are only
compatible when they who maintain alone
shape local laws and define and execute
schemes promotive of public good. We
have had quite enough of the. interminable
twaddle of immigration societies and agents.
What we need abroad are attractive moral
and social facts at home. We need that
respect for law and order that comes of the
execution of the laws by those interested
personally In their enforcement. We would
make property here valuable and desirable
10y lessening the cost of holding it. We
would therefore have this cost fixed by
those who have to pay it. Demagogues see
and confess these facts, even as do the
speechmaking resolution manufacturers of
legislatures and conventions; but the dema-
gogue dares not strike at the root of the
evil. He trembles in the presence of
the dirty mob and evades the issue.
He is always busy amending char
tiers and local laws and promising
admirable reforms and the duped people are
delighted and when the Legislature ad-
journs nothing practicable has been effected
and the same frauds are again and again re-
peated, and the same cowaTdice of law
makers illustrated, and towns and counties
are still robbed and our local municipal
governments are stillintolerable, those gov
erning who have no interest or sympathy
with those who must maintain the horrible
systems of robbery and misrule.


So plain are these simple facts and so i'm
possible the attraction of European wealth
unless reforms defined be effected, that we
would modestly suggest to Rev. Wingfeld
and his associates that they, reverse their
policy and instead of pouncIng down upon
England and Germany to seize wealth and
population, dragging them into negro and
mob ravaged towns and counties of the
Valley of the Mssissippi--lnstead of this
we modestly suggest that they first make
homes tolerable in savagely ruled towns and
counties. Let those fix rates who must pay
taxes. Let those who must pay the cost
build railways and bridges and culverts and
pave streets and illuminate a city with gas
| or county with school houses. Make the
county worth inhabiting, its local laws and
system of government endurable, and prop.
erty and life will care for itself. Murders
and fights and vulgar bullyism are not
feared. People abroad. as here in Texas,
will risk their lives and bodies where they
will not their money, and it is time the
whole country adopted sensible, practicable
means to assure immigration, and the primal
fundamental measure consists in the recon
struction of local municipal systems of gov
ernment in the United States. --, ai .r