Year: 1876

|


Fear has passed into certainty that the


limited sixty days of this session Of the Gen.


eral Assembly will be passed without the


adjustment Of the Returning Board. It is


certain that the odious contrivance will re-
main as it is, because the honest members OF
the House will act upon no election law which


retains Returning Board In any form, and


upon no am sndment Of the present election


law which is not accompanied by an era


sure of that piece of consummate political


rcguery from our Statute book. It is By far


the most mischievous and wicked invention


of the Radical nine years .usurpation in


Louisiana.


It is therefore the very one to which mis-
chievous and wicked political manipulators


cling with Q grip - firm and passionate as


that of the drowning sailor to floating spar.


They are wrong in this resolve and they know
it. They were wrong in establishing Re-
turning Board in the first instance and ex-
ceedinely impolitio 1t has enabled them to
continue q large number of officials in place
and power who were not elected in fact and
who were only counted in; but it has blezoned
the rascslity of the persons thus smuggled
into Office, of the party who perpetrated the
abominable and atrocious crime against the
elective rights Of the citizens Of republic
and of the impudent and audacioIs
officers who, as returning commits
sioners, suppressed, distorted and falsi6ed
the best established facts relating to occur
rences at the polls. The board is an intensely
wicket thing, but it has not been in the
20 xer OF the Conservatives Of the General
Assembly to abate the stupendous nuisance.
1t is something which the Radicals could not
be persuaded to part with for any considera.
ton which the friends of reform and justice
have to Cffsr The Withholding Of money,
with which to carry on the government, had
no terrors 10 them, as they well know the
millions that are ready to be used by their
party to carry the coming election, Of which
they can command more than what they
would receive out of the general appropria-
tion bill of the State. There was, in fact, no
way in which they could be hired, persuaded
or compelled to give up the Returning
Board.


Opinions differ as to the possible result.
Some are prepared to surrender in sullen
apathy, declaring that it is useless to hold an
election whose results are to be manipulated
according to the whims and wishes of few
Radical desperadoes. What is the uss, they
ask, in going to the expense and trouble Of
holding an election, when our opponents can
get from it any result they require for their
partisan purposes? Believing that nothing
can be done, they propose to let the entire
election as to the Legislature, the State
officers and the Presidential electors go BY de-
fault in favor of our sdversaries.


Others, and . very large majority Of the |
opponents of Radicalism, are fully deter
mined to try again to win back the lost power |
of the people. to rectify both branches of our
Legislature, 70 secure sn honest set Of State
officers, and to fiji local positions 9Th honest
men.


In our opinion che party Of submissionists |
will decline in humbets from day TO day. i
while che friends OF continued, persevering
snd energetic action will gsow in strength
the canvass wakes in fervo1 and intensifes in
interest The adhesion of the Radicals 70
their pet iniquity and Idol. the Returning
Board, and their dogged refusal to adopt any
Of the measures Of refofus demanded by the
people and urged BY conservative Represen-
tativ-s and Senators, will not put the voters
of louisiana into any improved state of feel
ing This feeling will be in no respect mol
lifted by the slanders against the white people
Of the South and Of Louisiana, which are to
no small part of the Radical cam
paign artillery.


# the campaign Of this year shall have any
one distinctive feature more marked aud
prominent than another 1t will be the popular
to deRose viilainy and install
integrity in its place and stead. Here where
Villainy has ruled more absolutely and more
than in any other Safe, it need
not be expected that the people are going to
be exceptionally and peculiarly Indifferent
Here where political abuse has been more ia
grant than anywhere else, it becomes the
people to take deeper interest and to labor
more industriously than all others in restoring
honesty and integrity in legislation, in tho
Of justice. and the execution /
If the laws.


II tho people of Louisiana, in the spirit re-
erred to. conduct the CANVASS with an eye I
'ingle to the redemption and restoration Of
she State. all may be we'll. {


0o1fn20Al1fanaaE
MORE BORDER TROUBLES THREAT I


ENEQ. I,
From present indications it would seem ,
hat the United States is on the verge Of
mother frontier war. which promises 70 be !,
ven longer and more bloody than the terri =
,ls Modoc waf. The Associated Press agent .
e Omaha has !selegraphed that he has official
that the three most powerful