Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1874 — The Question of the Day. [ARTICLE]

The Question of the Day.

Prof. Turner, of Jacksonville, 111., recently delivered an address at Galesburg on the isms of the day, from which we extract the following relating to the railroad qu< stion: “Cannot,” asks the /n----dustrial Age, “ our Wisconsin friends and the people ot an the 'Western States see mirrored in this extract their condition at the present time? ” , - After securing to themselves free grants of millions of public money (more than $20,000,000 from this State alone), and more square miles of public lands than there are in tlie six New England States, with New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois included, besides their right of way, our various corporations of common carriers began to consolidate and combine for the unlimited taxation of the produce of the country, under pretext of an unlimited right to flx their own freights and charges in defiance of the people, the States and their laws. They well knew that such a course was in fact a direct trampling under foot of every real doctrine of common law known to the civilized world since Romulus and Remus were suckled by the wolf. Heuee they sought shelter from thia common law of Christendom, and from all State laws based upon it, by inducing the courts to throw over and around them the pretended protection of the Constitution of the United States by that most infamous application to them of the doctrines applied In the celebrated Dartmouth College case. It seems to me that the simple reading of Mr. Webster’s argument in that case, and of Judge Marshall’s grounds of decision, by any lawyer of common sense, Wore any court of ordinary common sense, without further note or comment, would show, beyond all doubt, that whether the decision of tlie court was right or’ wrong in that particular case (which now some of our very ablest lawyers dispute) it is impossible tliat it should be made, logically, either to cover or come near to any oT our railroad cases. Ido not deny that railroads have guaranteed rights which must be most sacredly regarded'; but those rights are neither fully defined in nor “limited by the wording of their charters, whatever the wording may be. They h“ie simply the rights <-f comtium carriers under thecommon lair, no more, no less. This they themselves well know. Hence their extreme anxiety to escape the domain of the common law* and all statute laws of the States, which would render the practical application of the law either available or possible to the citizens, and to find some shelter from it under special statutes or constitutions of some sort. But they will find in tire end that this common law of Christendom evermore grasps and envelops them on all sides alike, as the light of day envelops the earth, and evermore will grasp and control them, and tliey cannot escape from its presence bv throwing dust in tlie air, whether it be their gold dust in our halls of legislation, or the still more blinding dust of their pettifogging special pleaders in our courts of justice. The dogmas by which these adroit, hireling, special pleaders would subject us to this corporate tyranny, through our courts, are no more the real common law of Christen, dom than the dogmas under which ecciesiasts burnt heretics, through the church, in the middle ages were the common law of Chris tianity. I know that the subject has now, mainly through our own folly, inaction and inattention, become involved in immense difficulties from which it is not possible to retrieve the country and save tlie future liberties of the continent without great and serious and undeserved losses to many worthy citizens. But the Republic must live, even though von and I ana all the rest of us may die. It'is high time that we were awake and fully resolved on its salvation at whatever costs of either our moneved or personal interests. The recent subterfuges and skulkings and evasions of this unscrupulous moneyed power shows us clearly that we are on the right track, whatever special pleaders or a prostituted and hireling press may say to the contrary. The great question now is not whether those corporations tax us too little or too much. As our fathers said in a far less infamous case, “ The right to take one pound imSlies the right to take ten pounds.’’ Ware ley now carrying our products for nothing, I would still with the same vigor prosecute this railroad war in behalf of the rights and Übieties of my children, of the continent and of the race. Under*any principle of real law known, or fit to be known,, to civilized men I deny that it wks possible tor any Legislature to put any sort of words Into any single charter whatever that could give any company this practical indefinite power of taxation. It is the tyranny and the infamy of the principle we are resisting; not merely a few cents per bushel in the price of corn and wheat The question now is not whether our corn will 'bring us sixty or sixty-one cents per bushel, but whether a few close corporations to Wall street, through their knaves in legislatures

and their hireling attorneys In courts, or our forty millions of people and their immemorial rights under the common Jaw of Christendom, are to rule this great continent of ours.