Year: 1873




LITTLE Rock, April IA commlttee
of citizens, headed by lawyers, have
drafted 4 veto. to be Illuminated by the
governor, at the head of the railway re-
lease bill as soon as it appears at the
hack door Of the senate. 1t will pass
the senate, and such has been the stage
thunder and sound and fury begotten
bv two or three people, that even Gov
ernor Baxter quakes. There was never
before such an illustration Of the force
of bowling and bluster and uproar. 1t
is astounding. Plain honest people have
no time to think, and all go
helter-skelter with the demented
little mob, which has its own fish to
fry, and laughs and enjoys keenly the
intolerable uprOar. l am told that the
excitement had origin with two gentle
men who stated, some time ago, that
they intended to have a deal of sport, il
nothing more, at the cost Of the legisla-
ture and railroads. The occasion was a
good one; the sum involved great
enough to excite popular alarm, and the
people have not had time, in the midst
of the noise and confusion, to learn pre-
cisely what the railroad bill means. 1t
augments and changes in nothing the
States liability. If the bill pass, the
stock must pay its bonds; if it do not
PASS, the State must pay these bonds.
In no case will the railroads help, unless
the Memphis and Little Rock company
be liable 10 pay one million two hundred
thousand dollars, to secure which the
State imagines it holds a second mort
gage. The other roads will never be
touched and never be completed while
the estate holds the first mortgage, and for
the reason that no one would lend mon
ey to the builders and owners. In very
truth the State gets stock in roads
that will be finished instead of
nothing, if it assent to the terms pro-
posed bv the railroad builders. If it sell
the roads it must buy them, and buys
nothing. 1t dare not undertake to fin
ish, manage or equip them. This would





it infamous, and Governor Baxter is the
last man to become the dupe of a fierce
excitement, baseless, empty, meaning
less, and begotten to annoy, if not to
blaekmail, the railway managers of the
state. Baxter is not the man who
would seize these helpless roads, or suf-
fer spectators to throttle them. He
would not have the State buy them, and
still less would ne have spectators
seize them, and still less is Mr.. Baxter
fool enough to wish the State to pay the
bonds, as it must in any event, and lose
the roads. Sgch are consequences that
must follow veto, and Mr.. Baxter is
not so thoroughly the dupe of baseless
uproar that he viii incur dangers of the
character here defined.


THE SUPPOSED VETO.


1t is surmised that the imaginary veto
as drawn, by a lawyer and editor and
ready made, like politicians coats, for
his excellency, contains the following
points. Itis wholly technical and may be
wholly baseless. Very certainly that
clause of the present constitution which
makes a stOckholder in a railway corpO-
ration liable for its debts to the amount
Of the stock, has no applicability to the
State as a stockholder in these roads un-
der charters made before this constitu-
ton was framed. This organic law of
1he State does not change legal rights
aud liabilities fixed and defined before
the constitution was framed and the
State becomes a stockhOldeT under
these old charters. Not one single rail-
way company in which the State may
become a stOckholder under the pending
bill. exists by virtue OF charter granted
since the present constitution was
adopted. The governor will be forced
10 improve this paper very materially
if, in overthrowinga a wise and beneticent
scheme of legislation, he may under
take to popularize his action by an able
veto message.


THE MESSAGE.


The supposed message of the governor
which you published yesterday morning
has been riddled by the lawyers and
laughed at by sensible people. In fact,
the big scare which the two papers ex-
cited has oozed out at the finger-ends Of
Uhe Legislature, and many say now that
the railroad steal" was no steal at all,
but the best measure, in many of its re-
.spects, discussed this session. X.