Newspaper Page Text
4
CGT>€C) X 4.
REV. A. J. RYAN, Editor
AUGUSTA, Ga., APRIL 24, 1869.
ZW* ALL SUBSCRIPTIONS AND
BUSINESS LETTERS FOR THE “BAN
NER OF THE SOUTH” SHOULD BE
ADDRESSED TO THE PUBLISHERS -
L. T. BLOME & CO.
COMPROMISE.
Compromise is the grave of truth. A
says the shield is black; B says that it is
white. The shield must be either black
or white, and yet they compromise by
ag ceing it is gray. This is a denial of
truth, and any edifice built upon such a
foundation must partake of the precari
ous nature of its corner-stone. Some
day the stifled verity asserts itself; some
day it “will not down,” and then the last
state of this compromise lusiness is
worse than the first.
Throughout our constitutional history
the exemplifications of these principles
are mournfully frequent. “For the sake
of peace and quietness,” compromise
after compromise is recorded, and yet
there is not one of them that has had
any other ultimate effect than to augment
and exasperate the evils of that very an
tagonism that the compromise sought to
lull into quiescence. The reason is evi
dent. Each party to the compromise
has always known and felt that the truth
of the controversy, wherever that truth
was, was buried in the compromise, be
cause the compromise was neither a
settlement on A’s basis nor B s basis,
but on a basis equally unassorted and
unbelieved in by either. And yet, with
this plain teaching before us, there are
now some who seek to compromise on
the question of Race. Some—and we
are proud and happy to rank ourselves
to the last throb of our heart, nunc et
in articido mortis, in that number—
believe that it is the right of the white
man alone to rule in this country.
Others believe, or say they believe, that
the negro has an equal right; and be
tween these two come in some who
profess a willingness to compromise on
a qualified negro suffrage.
Bat tv ho is to do the qualifying ?
Is it to be supposed that the fanatic
sentiment which demands that any ne
gro shall vote will be satisfied with any
thing less than that all negroes shall
vote ? And how, even if that senti
ment ive/e willing to compromise on
qualified negro suffrage could it accede
to unqualified white suffrage at the
same time ? Is it not the very war-crv
and solo argument of this fanaticism
that ‘‘rights” should be equal, and if
you could get it to assent to a qualified
suffrage for one race would it not insist
on the application of the very same
quahticatiotis for the other? The bare
idea of a qualified negro suffrage is as
mad a thought as universal negro suf
frage itself and ten times as illogical.
And again : Suppose there was a quali
fier 1 negro suffrage, say $250 of proper
ty and ability to read and write; how
long would it be before the whole figrht
Would have to be fought over again on
the question of reducing the qualifica
tion, say, to $l5O and ability to read
alone ! And then when that was wearied
oat of us, here would be a fresh contest
tu liL further reduce, and so on, con
test alter contest, until the issue would
h- just as it is now, that of universal
savage suffrage, with this difference that
now we are against it in toto and then
would be committed to it by having
gianted the main point in granting the
qualification. There is no way, then, of
evading this issue by a compromise, for
a compromise is a concession of the issue.
Choose ye, then, this day—for it is either
the one thing or the other; either to cry
Peccavi and throw down the strong wea
pon of your Consent; or to stand up
against this great wrong now and forever
as becomes the blood of noble gentlemen,
“the descendants of a race of men that
have dethroned Kings.”
But this is sentiment! Then 0! care
less Gallic! 0! time-serving Doeg, you
who would forget your dead brethren and
your living self, we will touch your
pocket in this thing. You are poor, are
youn>t? industriously seeking to build
up your shattered fortunes and, so this
is done, you care not what price you pay
for a peace that will enable you to do it.
We pass by the argument that if tempo
rary negro suffrage is temporary trouble
then permanent negro suffrage is perma
neut trouble, and come to this point :
What good will your fortunes do you if,
when you have gotten it, the negro stands
ready to vote it away ? By conceding
negro suffrage, in hopes that the conces
sion will leave you at liberty to push
the money-hunt, you are sowing the tares
among the wheat. The bad seed will
| grow, pari passu, with the good, and lo!
when you shall say “ My slave is, with my
consent, my feliow-citizcn, but then I
have made much moneys,” that fellow
citizen will step in to say, “Give me of
your moneys that I may build schools,
and colleges, and hospitals, and churches,
and asylums for my race. Money to
pay me for making tax laws to take your
money away. Money that I may always
buy enough base white men to turn the
scale against you at every election.
Money to keep my foot upon your neck
and my hand in your pocket.”
How will you answer this? Andean
you, ns a good business man, look for
prosperity in any community where one
race is uprigh and industrious and the
other is profligate and pauper, and yet
the power of disposing of property is
common to both ? You would not in
your daily business take in a dissipated
bankrupt as your partner, and yet where
is the difference in principle between this
and that political partnership that negro
suffrage would be ? No, my friend ; if
it has ever entered into your mind that
perhaps, for the sake of peace and quiet
ness, it might be as well to fix up some
kind of a compromise in this thing, dis
miss the thought. Immersed in the toils
of life as men of business are, ft is not
surprising that some such incomplete
conception af this great matter should
have entered in. But cast it out. The
main question is one that does not admit
of any compromise, for in its material as
pect it simply is: Whether the earnings
of the white race are to be at the mercy
of an ignorant and facile horde of pauper
barbarians.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND LIBERTY.
We have already shown in our former
article, in reply to the Methodist Advo
cate, of Atlanta, Ga., that the Catholic
Church is not only not the enemy of
education, but is the foster-mother, as it
were, even of the Free School system
so much lauded as a purely American
institution. The same journal charged
our Church, also, with being the ene
my of liberty and civilization. If she is
the advocate and the patron of educa
tion, she is necessarily the friend and
promoter of civilization and human en
lightenment. Her thousands of schools,
her religious Orders devoted to the
education of y-outh, the devotion and
self-sacrificing zeal of her Clergy in
spreading the Gospel in lands where
Protestantism dare not go, ought to be
a sufficient refutation of the slander
that she is the enemy of civilization.
But we let that charge pass for the
present; and proceed to assert, as we
do here boldly and unequivocally, that
the Catholic Church is the truest and
best friend of Liberty—that Liberty
which is born of God and clothed with
law and justice—that Liberty which we
of the South have delighted to advocate
and fought to defend —Constitutional
•mmsi ©i fii ifsi.<
Liberty. Father Hecker, a convert to
the Catholic Church, writes : “It is only
since I have been a Catholic that I have
been a consistent and intelligent citizen
of a Republic.” He further says : “Man
has no right to surrender his judgment.
Endowed with free will, man has no right
to yield up his liberty. Reason and
free will constitute man a responsible
being, and he has no right to abdicate
his independence. Judgment, Liberty,
Independence, these are divine and in
alienable gifts; and man cannot renounce
them, if he would.” And Father Hecker
is but one of a numerous class of writers
who take the very same view. Mgr.
Segur, a French Prelate, says :
“ Only in the Church can the spirit of
man find the true freedom of thought.”
A writer in the Catholic World , in
the course of an ably written article en
titled, “ A Plea for Liberty of Con
scierT'V” says: “It is only by a jealous
I’egaJl forthe personal religious liberty
of evtry individual that we can live to
gether in peace and harmony.”
Another writer, an English Catholic
says: “The Catholic Church, rightly un
derstood, is the most liberal of all insti
tutions. It is the source and security of
true freedom. * * * * It has
everything to gain from Liberty, and
everything to lose by adopting tyrannical
principles.”
M. Perin, a French Catholic Political
Economist, has shown with admirable
force and precision how Catholicism es
tablishes self-renunciation as “the corner
stone of all social relations,” and guar
antees “ the greatest freedom to man,
and the greatest security to property.”
In 1250, Bonacursio de Sorresina a
capitano del popolo, of Bologna, in a
register upon which was placed the
names of the enfranchised, wrote: “It is
then just and equitable that man saved
and freed by God should not stagnate in
servitude where human laws have pre
cipitated him ; that he should be free.
By these considerations, Bologna, which
has always fought for public liberty
Ac. And this language was the repro
duction of the well-known words of Pope
Gregory 1., the Great, against the slavery
of the Anglo-Saxons.
When Bela, King of Hungary, re
jected a Bishop because he was born a
serf, the Pope wrote to him that “ The will
of man could not prescribe against nature,
that has given liberty to the human
race”
The gentle and seraphic Bonaventura,
in the course of a sermoD, says: “ We
find to-day great scandals in Govern
ments; for while an inexperienced pilot
would net be placed on a ship to manage
the rudder, we put at the head of na
tions those who ignore the art of govern
ing them. When the right of succession
places children on a throne, woe to
Empires !”
Says a writer on the subject in the
loth century, “ Civil liberty, so to say,
was the fruit of the preachings of the
Church,” and in the old Missals of the
Church will be found “ The Mass against
Tyrants.”
The peace of Constance was signed
in 1183, which assured definitely tho
liberty of the Lombard people, it being
expressly stated by the Deputies of the
Lombard League, “ that it would be per
mitted to the cities of the Society to re
main always in unity with the Church f
The great Charter of the Liberties of
England dates from 1215, and at the
head of its signatures is found the learned
disciple of the Rope, Cardinal Stephen
Langton. It was upon the principles
of that grand Charter for which England
was indebted to Catholic Prelates, Catho
lic Nobles, and a Catholic King, that
the American Revolution was fought
and independence gained. It was upon
this principle, too, that the Catholic
Charles Carroll of Carrollton signed his
name in full to the Declaration of Inde
pendence. Let not this disgust our At
lanta contemporary with his “ model Re
public,” for, worse still, it was upon this
self-same principle that the people of the
South sought to defend their liberties
against Northern oppression and intoler
ance. We failed ; but that grand Roman
Catholic principle of human liberty still
lives, and must and will triumph despite
the efforts of its enemies. It may not
result in a Southern or a Northern Con
federacy; hut it will yet govern this
land, and every land where the Gospel is
preached by Catholic Priests and prac
tised by Catholic worshippers. It was
established in Maryland, when Puritanism
was denying it to the Protestant people
of New England. It was practised in
Catholic Frauce, while Protestant North
Carolina excluded Jews from the right
to hold office, and some of the New Eng
land States disfranchised Catholics to the
same extent.
It is easy to talk and to write—to
make charges and to misrepresent, but
the Catholic Church does not fear inves
tigation. She courts it. She demands
it. She wants the world e to know her as
she is, and she, therefore, has no fear of
investigation. But we ask for her jus
tice and fair dealing. We have a right
to ask this, nay to expect it without ask
ing, from men who profess to he enlight
ened men, Christian men, just men. If
they will examine her record in this
spirit; if they will read the words of her
Prelates, and her writers, they will see
that through all these preachings and
writings come a constant and unending
advocacy of popular freedom. She is the
great defence of popular lights, and de
mands justice at the hands of Christian
rulers. It was in this spirit that the
Holy Father, Pope Pius IX. gave his
sympathies to our struggling Republic,
and, when its banner was trailed in the
dust and its fortunes destroyed, offered
up his prayers to Heaven for the succor
and release of the captured Representa
tive of that lost Republic, Jefferson Davis.
It was in this spirit that Catholic France
and Catholic Cuba sympathised with us in
our struggle, and the Catholic Press of this
country denounced the war against us
as cruel and unjust. Let the sapient edi
tor of the Advocate read, ponder, and re
fleet. Let him study and pray for wis
dom. Let him practice the precepts con
tained in that sacred Book whick he
professes so much to venerate and to
love, and his jaundiced mind will be
cured of its serious distemper, while his
judgment will render him more tit to deal
with his Catholic brethreu with justice
and courtesy.
N EVV YORK CORRESPONDENCE
OF THE BANNER OF THE SOUTH.
LETTER FROM TYRONE POWERS.
Editors Banner of the South :
And so we have lost Connecticut ?
Yes, the rogues carried it by about 400
majority in a total vote es WO,OOO, elected
their Governor, a majority of the Legis
lature, and three out of the four Con
gressmen. Had they elected the other Con
gressman too, it would not have made
much matter, for, to my poor eye-sight,
the difference between the kind of Demo
crat we have lately seen in Washington
and the Radicals themselves is not worth
talking about. A tremendous blight
seems to have fallen on these bearers of
a once proud name. They draw their
pay and mileage, and vote ay and no,
and not always right at that as their
names are called, but, beyond this, might
as well be in Kamschatka for all they
do. Therefore it is, I say, that the de
feat in Connecticut does not altogether
dissolve your most obedient servant in
tears. The truth is that these Demo
cratic leaders are cowed. The masses of
the Democratic party North are, I think,
true men ; the anti-war, copperhead
Democrats certainly are sound, but their
leaders are either idiots, poltroons, or
knaves. Either they are sold out, or
they are too unutterably inefficient to
be at the head of the party, or else they
are cowed, or, and [ think this quite
likely, they are a little of all three.
There never was such a chance \o smash
an administration party as is now pre
sented, and yet these wretched, wretc ied
nonentities fail either to see or ize the
golden opportunity. They must come
down. They must give up the batons of
leadership, and, if they will not, then
those batons must be wrenched away.
The voters of these United States—and
by voters, of course, I mean white men,
not recognizing Congo suffrage any more
than I do monkey suffrage—number
something like six and a half millions,
thus divided: Democrats 3,500,000: Radi-
cals 3,000,000. The electoral vote rt
presented by these Democratic votes L
165, or over a majority of the electoral
college. The accuracy of these f l?Ur^s
the reader may find by reference to r anv
current political manual, the basis
of course, a fair vote. Now then with
this fact presented to us, that the num
bers are against Radicalism in a country
where, sooner or later, numbers must
ever carry the day, who can doubt an ul
timate down)ffill of wrong and an ulti
mate triumph of right ? Look at this
man Grant; does not everybody km.w
that the fellow was elected by fraud ?
Look at the Senate and the. House; is j t
not a matter of public notoriety that they
are stuffed to repletion, the one with
bogus Senators and the other with Re-
presentatives who represent nothing but
Radical chicanery and fraud ? Look at
the Supreme Court; do wo not ail know
that it would pronounce all this devilish
legislation unconstitutional if it were
not under duress ? None of the three
great branches of Government, neither
the Executive, nor Legislative, nor .T u
dicial, represent the majority of the lawful
iHters of these United States and this
majority will assert itself at last, no mat
ter how a brazen, impudent, lying, fa
natical minority stocks the cards. This
loil bubble must hurst. The real weak
ness of this hand in the game of bluff
must appear. Patience, and shuffle the
cards.
A doleful story reaches here from
Mississippi and Virginia. It seems that
that nest of vipers at Washington which
calls itself the Congress, came to the con
clusion it was not making much pro
gress in those States and, by way of
making better headway, turned out all
the State officers and held their offices
up as bribes to any “rebel” who would
confess his enormous guilt in warring
against the “nation” and then give a
pledge of future support to the Radical
party. As it happened, the good people
of Virginia and Mississippi did not scg
the thing “in those lamps” and virtualb.
told the villains to take the offices and
go hang. Asa consequence, the ordii a
ry officers of justice, among them cl r!;s
of Court, Ordinaries, and Magistrates, are
wonderfully scarce, and as the young
men cannot obtain licenses to marry,
there is quite a comical state of distress
at present existent. “ Arter a while,
as Bill Arp says, it will be all right, no
doubt, hut I cannot hut fancy that t
progeny of these delayed marriages v. .
be taught to love that blessed Cover..*
merit which could stoop to such dirty
tricks on Pa and Ma.
The Texas constitution, that is the
filthy little rag some low white felhnv>
and some negroes were busy on in Aus' m
so long, has reached me in lull and a
very remarkable piece ol dirt it is- In
the first place, it was not made even by
the bogus convention, that learned a u
pie-bald body having broken up in a row,
but was manufactured at the mill!
head-quarters’ In the next place it stab
as the very first object of its formatio-i,
“that the heresies of nullification ad
secession, which brought the country
grief, may be eliminated from politico
discussion.” This is a huge joke. . The
poor little South Carolina nullification of
a thieving tariff is not a circumstance
to the wholesale nullification of every
thing good, true, wise, merciful and just
that these ruffians have been guilty of
for any time in these eight years past.
As to secession, I fancy, that, though
fifty thousand bogus conventions were to
say to the contrary, it is just as tri
now as it ever was and an hundred lime,
more desirable. Moreover if secession be
so very dear, as thes i fellows say, way
do they take such pains to “eliminate” it: ;
A next remarkable thing in this bastar!
constitution is “that the fundamental
principles embodied herein can only be
changed subject to the national authori
ty,” which means of course that the peo
ple of Texas are never to amend this
fraud unless the “nation” consents. As
further points of interest, it may be men
tioned that a tenure-of office law to bin !
the bogus Governor, quite ala boohy
Grant, is provided and education is ma !
compulsory in a system of public si bo< -
where picauinnies are to be crowded ui
cheek by jowl with the white clihdie-i.
Texans are not the most patient <4 |;a
and when this bogus constitution g ( -
into full operation it is probable sun
body will get hurt.
There has lately been in these par’
what the loil love to call “ a carnival >t
crime.” To say there has been any
amount ol theft, forgery and robbing,
would be but to describe the not in-a
slate of affairs, but the singularity ol tb
“carnival” is assassination, Lnecie-i
and encouraged by philanthropic efio; s
to do away with the death penalty,
poor, dear murderers have shot, auu
stabbed, and bludgeoned people in gre -
plenty, and*as some unreasonable ere
tures related to these victims have sough
to hang their slayers and the phi'ant In ‘ -