Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1881 — THE VIRGINIA REPUDIATORS. [ARTICLE]

THE VIRGINIA REPUDIATORS.

[Washington Cor. New York Son.] The first attempt of Don Cameron to rush resolutions through the Legislature of Pennsylvania, approving the oorrupt coalition with Mahone, which he personally negotiated, had to be abandoned in the original form. Honest Republicans protested vigorously against indorsing the bargain with an avowed repudiator, and they were wise in that resistance. The Richmond Whig is known to be Mahone’s personal organ. The bondholders of the Atlantic, Pacific and Ohio railroad, of which he was President, until it was wrecked by mismanagement and worse meanß, publicly charged that this paper was purchased with money belonging to them and not accounted for. Here are some of the sentiments of that organ, uttered during the campaign in which the repudiators, under the name of Readjusters, succeeded by a combinatiop of the werst elements of both parties : Put a clause in the State and Fedoral constitutions that no contracts between individuals shall he enforced iu any court. The truth is, that if Virginia should at once repudiate her whole debt it would be the most effective means possible to entice within her borders both capital and immigrants. W. W. Newman was elected a Judge by the Readjusters last winter, and his notion of contracts is expressed as follows : Tho Government, before returning to gold and redeemable papier, is bound by every principle of justice to reduce all contracts to a gold basis and scale them accordingly. Mr. Blair, who was Chairman of the Readjuster Convention at Richmond, declared in his speech : Having achieved a great triumph in the State on our view of the debt issue, I now favor a vigorous application of the readjustment principle to the national debt. And the bill of Riddleberger, which repudiated out and out one-third of the State debt and made no honest provision for the payment of the remaining twothirds, recites : That, in its direful operation upon Virginia, the reconstruction period was equivalent to the war, and equally exonerated the State from the payment of interest on a just debt.

Declarations like these might be multiplied indefinitely, but those given are sufficient to show the purpose and the so-called “principle” of this Readjuster party, of which Mahone is the acknowledged leader. Its main idea was repudiation of the State debt as a beginning, and of the national debt as the end. It was a summons to the worthless, ignorant, desperate and bankrupt of all parties to make common cause, as Communists, against honesty and good faith. The next step would have been for a division of property. In the face of these facts, which are notorious and cannot be successfully disputed, Mr. Hawley and other Republican Senators who sustain the bargain with Mahone have the effrontery to speak as follows: / It seems to an outsider casually glancing at it that the Senator from Virginia, Who sits on this side (Mr. Mahone), nowjdesires actually to pay a large portion of the debt, and the others are williug to otve tho whole <and pay none. Mr. Hawley made that false statement with the knowledge that it was destitute of the color of truth in any form or in any part. It was, therefore, a willful deception without excuse or palliation. The bondholders and the State agreed upon a settlement known as the McCulloch bill, by which the whole debt, in round numbers, $32,500,000, was to be paid in a fixed term of years, with graduated interest at 3 ; 4 and 5 per cent. Mahone organized the Readjuster movement in to thatrmeasure, wliich he denounced then, and recently on the floor of the Senate, as the Brokers’ bill. He antagonized it with what is known as the Riddleberger or Repudiation bill, and he was elected to the Senate on that distinct issue. Hawley, Hoar, Dawes, Sherman and the Republican leaders, who have sold their political birthright to Mahone for a nasty mess of pottage, went into the trade with their eyes open. They wanted possession of the* committees to shape legislation, and they did not stop to consider the means by which that object might be attained. They found Mahone willing to sell, And they were desirous to buy. They paid the price he demanded in the nominations before the Senate, and in the exceptional honors conferred upon him. And now, when honorable Republicans would retreat from this unholy alliance, with which they are disgusted, and into which they were coerced by the caucus. Mahone, like the political Shy lock he is, exacts the “ penalty and forfeit of his bond.”

He insists, and we do not blame him for it, that his candidates must be elected now; that the contract must be completed, and that the ceremony of nominating Gorham, Riddleberger and tke rest of them is not a fulfillment of the agreement. And Mahone has let his allies understand plainly that he holds the key of the door by which they entered into the bargain. The Republicans are Shut in, and will stay in that condition until their present master lets them out. The business of the executive session, treaties, and a hundred important nominations, are dead-locked. Wty? Because Mahone wants his pay or pound of flesh. He will not badge frohx this demand, knowing full well that, unless his men are chosen now, they will never be elected. He asks, with much frankness and force : “ How can I face the Readjusters of Virginia if Riddleberger be cast aside? Expectant offioe-holders have thronged the galleries for weeks, until they have become weary. To send them back to old Virginia empty-handed would be to invite defeat in the coming campaign. Something must be done, and that quickly.” Under this appeal and threat the caucus decided to stand by the Mahone ticket, and, as Don Cameron started out by telling the Senate it was only a question of endurance, he will have a full opportunity to put his test to trial.