Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1875 — MEXICAN OUTRAGES. [ARTICLE]

MEXICAN OUTRAGES.

In his heart he knows it [the last legislature] did less for the money received, and the time employed, than any legislature Indiana has had for years.— M llepublwa n. The last legislature Was in session a less number of days than its immediate predecessor, enacted more and better laws, and cost the taxpayers $ 75,000 Jess money. Brother Keiser evidently has the two bodios confounded in his mind. The result, possibly, of reading the Tilton-Beecher testimony on an empty stomach, and trying to recollect which is the defendant. Connecticut held her elections Monday for State, county and municipal officers, and representatives in Congress. Owing to the White League and KuKlux outrages in Louisiana two or three years ago, and the prevalence of banditti in the South, Republicans were frightened from the polls, and the State was carried by an increased Democratic majority. They even beat General Joseph Hawley for Congress. The only way left for the President to be consistent with precedent, and punish the people of Connecticut for exercising their constitutional rights, is to semi some drunken Judge Durell there to unseat Governor Ingersoll, and order General Sheridan to Hartford > to publish that the people are a parcel qf Y ankee bandits.

Col. Healey was in Chicago Tuesday, attending a meeting of the Chicago & south Atlantic railroad company. They have the iron paid for to lay the track irofii Dyer to the Kankakee river, and are nearly ready to commence laying it down. As soon as the right of way is obtained, grading will be done through Jasper county, And tracklaying will follow as ,soon as the grading is completed. If *75,000 is raised, payable when the cars are running to this place, the road will be built to Rensselaer; if that sum is not raised within a reasonable time, the road will not be built -to this ..town. Th6se are the plain conditions, and those who are in. terested may govern their movements accordingly. If people who are interested in the welfare of this portion of Jasper county want the full benefits of this railroad, they have got to buy them. There is no use to multiply words about it, or to delay action any longer. You know what the article is, the price of it, and the terms; if ydu want it, bid; if you don’t want it, sit stjll and figure what your neighbors ouight to do.

Is it not singular that our government permits marauders Jroin Alexico to cross over the boundary and sack, pillage and burn towns, destroy public property, and rob, outrage and murder American > citizens without attempting to punish or prevent these offenses? For! ten years past that we know of the people of Texas living within fifty miles-of the Rio Grand, have been in constant jeopardy of raids by« bands of free-booting Greasers, who come over every little while to stampede stock, burn ranches, outrage'women, and murder citizens of the I nited States. Only a few days

ago a raid of this kind was iM<le not far frorx Brownsville. The bandits surprised a military pust on the frontier, massacred a number colored soldiers who opposed them, destroyed the government property there, pushed their raid, seventyfive miles into the State, killed a government mail carrier, pillaged and burnt a town, and drove away sevei al thousand dollars’ worth of cattle and horses belonging to citizens of the United States. There were less than a hundred of these bandits, yet they were not pursued nor interfered with bv the governnient tr'oops stationed down there to protect the border, and the telegraph now announces from Wash-J ington that President Grant says he “can see no reason for appre-l hension of trouble between the two countries,” although he is officially informed of these outrages, and the “Mexican Government has been repeatedly reminded of the outrages heretofore committed by Mexicans upon citizens of the

United States.” This sdems to mean that the people there will not be protected, and that .Mexican bandits will be permitted to plunder and murder without hindrance, or punishment. If a Southern.city elects Democratic officers, or a saloon keeper declines to sell whiskey to a negro, a lieutenant general and the army and navy of the United States m«y be detailed to reverse the decision of the people in one case, and the judiciary must compel proper respect towards a fellow citizen in the other; but, meanwhile, foreign bandits and cutthroats may rob,—pllage,- burn, outrage women and murder along our frontiers to their cursed hearts’ satisfaction,or they massacre whole congregations of American citizens while kneeling at religious devotions on the holy Sabbath day, and there “is no reason for apprehension of war between the two countries,” although the government which gives protection to these robbers and assassins and to which they acknowledge allegiance, “has been repeatedly reipinded” ol this barbarous lawlessness. The policy of our government towards Mexico in this matter is shamefully criminal. It is unjust to the people who are taxed to maintain a government that refuses to perform

the chief duty for which it to-wit: the protection of its citizens in their rights to life, peace, the worship of God as their consciences dictate, and the possession of property. It is weak and cowardly, it is shameful and undignified, it is wrong and criminal to permit such outrages to go unredressed. Suppose we are afraid of Spain and dare not compel that government to make compensation for crimes perpetiitted on the high seas, does it therefore follow that we must patiently submit to all the indignities that may be heaped upon our countrymen upon our own soil, by marauders from a nation that our armies thirty years ago were powerful enough to whip? War is a dreadful calamity. It is, or always should be, the last resort, only to be appealed to after all other means have been tried and failed to effect the purpose sought. t But there is a calamity more terrible still than war which may befall a people; a calamity more wasting and desolating to a country; more demoralizing to its inhabitants; more destructive to civilization; * ■ and that calamity is uncertain peace —a condition ol society where the civil'authorities arc powerless to enforce wholesome laws and pievent violence, and where the military are not permitted to interfere. Such a state of affairs seejns to exist along the southwestern part of Texas to-day. - Property and life is rendered insecure by bands of

lazy, semi-civilized marauders that flaunt defiance in the face of our government, and arc safe from punishment beneath the flag of one of the least powerful and most contemptible nations of the world. Rapine and murder and assassination, oft repeated and unpunished, alter the mother government has been repeatedly notified yet tails to take cognizance of the crimes, not sufficient provocation for the government of the United States to interfere to protect her citizens? If neither the destruction of public property, Or the murder of public officers, or the assassination of defenseless women and children while engaged in divine worship, are not sufficient provocation for war when the government whose citizens commit these crimes neglects to punish or prevent them, thus becoming particeps -criminis, what, then, would be provocation to justify war?