Year: 1873

fool in mortar, yet will his foolishness
not depart from him" 1t is the nature
of impracticable creatures of this sort
never to know their best friends They
can never learn and can never forget,
and once possessed of an idea, no expert
ence however hard, can teach them that
it was wrong, and no wisdom, even
though it were inspired, induce them to
accept another in its place. We should
be sorry to believe that this is the char
acter of the southern people generally,
but it requires a good deal of patience
and good deal of faith to reject the evil
dence that is the most cherished and
most common type. Mr.. Jefferson Davis,
for example, never loses an opportunity
to persuade the world that he will gladly
suffer martyrdom rather than surrender
an exploded opinion, and that, having
stopped thinking thirteen years ago,
there is no power in events human or
divine to induce him to resume that
painful process.


Unhapply he is not without his fol
lowers. We had occasion not long since,
with reference to the impending election
for governor in Massachusetts,, to say
something of the character in peace and
in war of General Butler. We were think
ing of that person rather than of the
southern rebels, though we referred TO
the late rebellion and his services in its
suppression by way of illustration. 1t is
our ill-fortune that such reference does
not meet with the appreciation of the
New Orleans Picaya.ne, which, because we
recognized the fitness of General Butler
to conduct a negotiation with such saw
age as Captain jack as well as to deal
with rebels of any sort in arms, resents
the supposed imputation that all south
hor hap
one were not amused one might be impa-
tient at such perversion of the plain
meaning of words, but wrongheadedness
sometimes resolves itself into such abso-
lutte imbecility as to be laughable as well
as pitiable. Thus the PicGyune "wreaks
itself upon expression" in such an exam
pie as this of sentimental bathos and
prodigiously fine writing;


what you call rebel, we call patriot;
what you call rebellion, we take from the
tombstone of the regicide of Charles l.,
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to
Godr What you call duty, in the foul
and corrupt government you have put
over us, we call tyranny What you call
free government, in the usurpation and
consolidation of powers in the govern
ment of the United States, wescall hid
eous, remorseless despotism. Command
that we shall be aliens in language as in
government. We obey"


The man who can write or the people
who can listen to such stuff as this, ut
tered on such small provocation as a dis
cussion of General Buffers fitness to be
Governor of Massachusetts, is beyond
argument and past praying for. If the
Picdyune represents any considerable por-
ton of the people of Louisiana, there is
little hope for that state till they are re-
moved to another and better world
Missionaries cannot save nor carpet
baggers' do them much harm in this. If
they can only see in the people of the
North-busy in little else than money
making, and caring little else about Lou
isiana than that she should have the
good sense to settle her troubles, and go
to work in raising more cotton and max
ing more sugar-lf they can only see in
them "a foul and corrupt government"
"a hideous and remorseless despetism,
which has no parallel except in that of
Charles l., then one might as well appeal
to the sober judgment of the inmates of
mad-house, or the good sense of cage
of chattering chimpanzees. The little
boys of that state, we trust are not such
implacable donkeys, and when their
fathers are removed from a world that
cannot understand and is not good
enough for them-when they also shall
sleep with the regicides, and have in
scribed upon their tombstones that "re-
sistance to tyrants is obedience to God p |
and that that was the way in which they
passed their beautiful and useful lives,
when they could spare the time from
"larrupping their niggers then a new
Louisiana, perhaps, will mend the levees,
plant more cotton and grind more sugar
cane, accept the world as it is, go to the
primary meetings and consent to count
the negro vote. Let US hope that we
shall not be disappointed in these little
boys when they come of age, and that
they are Slready wiser than their fathers


But seriously, is it not time that the
South had outgrown and should cease
this sort of fustan talk of the jeff Davis
school? 1t is neither manly, nor wise,
nor heroic. No matter what she meant
to do thirteen years ago-she did not do
it. The states are United States again,
and there is not, and is not going to be
Southern ContederRcy independent OF
and separate from thirty-odd millions of
northern people who have the will and
the power to make this portion of the
American continent one people united
and indivisibe. 1t is time that the more
sensible and better class of the South
should make it understood that they do
not choose to be misrepresented by this
| fiatulent bombast,. and made ridiculous
by these frantic screams and idiotic raw
ings, which, if they ever had any inlu
| ence, are as unmeaning and absurd in the
new conditions of this people and coun-
try as would be now crusade under an