Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1884 — Advice to Rascals. [ARTICLE]

Advice to Rascals.

It •would of course be a happy state of affairs if, when things go wrong, aggressors and aggrieved could get together, calmly reason and compromise in a spirit of justice. But that blissfxl era has never yet dawned upon the world, and, doubtless, never will. An attempt to administer justice without a reserve of physical force, to maintain a decree, if necessary, would be quite absurd. A law without a penalty is inoperative. Hence the wisdom of the theory that the majority should rule. In the United States it has been demonstrated that the people are quite capable of self-government. The majority may at times appear to be going at a reckless pace toward destruction, but, on summing up the results of a century’s experiment and experience, it is found thgjt this is, after all, the very best Government on the earth. It is, however, a fact that, at times bad men get to the front; that, somehow, the elections do not place the best candidates in the administrative positions; that the taxes increase; that in legislation the individual is overlooked and the corporation made stronger; that the police grow blind and villains thrive. The impression is vaguely made that the majority is vicious. But it is a wrong impression. The majority is not vicious. It may forget at times, and grow so absorbed in personal affairs as to become indifferent to the welfare of the body politic and calmly forego the work of overthrowing its oppressors. But wait! Suddenly the conviction flashes through the mind of the majority that it is growing helpless. It realizes that it is mocked at, and bantered. It finds the laws it has made, or allowed to be made, are twisted into cords to bind its own will. It finds its confidence abused. What does it do ? Whatever it does, it certainly does not wait. It wrecks, and wrecks at once. Such a wrecking was seen in Cincinnati some time ago. Jt was not a new thing in this country. The lesson of the hour is for the rascals to read. It is this: In all your schemes to rob the people or to defeat their purposes, do not make them feel they are growing helpless 1 Delude, if you will, but use every possible effort to maintain the delusion. Never laugh at the people nor taunt them with impotence. The majority of the inhabitants of any given community, barring the penitentiaries, are honest people. They may give you tether and rein now and then, but do not openly claim the mastery. There is nothing so terrible, so destructive, and, at times, so incon-

siderate as the wrath of a community of liberty-loving voters. The whisky dealers could long ago have checked the prohibition movement, which is gathering strength every year, if they had chesen to cheerfully obey the laws. It is doubtful if there is a majority of prohibitionists—on the plain issue of the morality of liquordrinking—in any State; but when the operation of certain laws, in any State, made to regulate the traffic, is annulled, simply because it may not be the pleasure of the liquor-sellers to obey, then prohibitionists spring up thicker than bees in a clover-field. The corporations which control certain staple supElies, essential to the comfort and welleing of the people, can move on without disturbance if they show a decent regard for the interests es their customers from whom they receive their franchises. The people at large do not object to large individual wealth, per se, acquired by the members of the corporations. But when these corporations dare to show a disposition to oxtort, or to compel, or to override, or to turn the deaf ear, or to drown complaints in the jingle of purses, they do so at their peril. The people are very much disposed to play fairly, but when they find the game is not fairly conducted, they will use means to restore fairness, which, if desperate, are nevertheless effective.

The people have a dead-line. As the lesson of the hour is thus perceived to be that the rascals are only secure so long as the people are not made aware of their helplessness, it follows that the country is pretty safe, and that those who have invested in the bonds of the Government need have no fear but that the interest will be regularly paid. This is a fair deduction for the reason that scoundrels invariably overdo themselves and the people then come to the rescue. Lynch law is not always an expression of the popular will; but sometimes it is, and when it is—as it is sure to be on occasions when the very life of the Government is threatened —it is an indication of a general sentiment that the majority must, according to the theory of the fathers, rule. Lynch law, it may be said, in order to prevent misconception, does not always take the form of midnight hangings or heedless destruction cf property. It crops out in other ways quite as often, sometimes through Congressional enactments; sometimes through a precedent-ignoring Judge.— <?. C. Matthews, in the Current.