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Solid Common Sense

Solid Common Sense image
Parent Issue
Day
3
Month
August
Year
1877
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

That able non-partisan journal The Methodist says : The indictment of the members of the Louiximui Keturning Board has excited a good deal of discussion, lt is claimed by Bouie that the act is a violation of an agreement, made wheu Packard retirod, not to prosecute men tor political oti'misoH. Now, we hope that forgery and perjury - for these are the acts charged - will never becouie " political offenses " in this country. Like murder, they are orimes, and our only safety is in keoping them in that oategory. The publio will be able to judge whether the prosecution is vindictive when the evidence is presented. Most persons understand that the Fresidential contest was closed by Congres; but nothing else was olosod. If in New York or Louisiana men forged returnB, they ought to be prosecuted. If men did murder in any State, a political pretext should not cover them with impunity. A habit of following up in the courtg the charges made in the newspapers would tend to purify our politics. Several hundred murder trials ought to be goiug on in Louisiana if eertain papers told the truth. The same paper also comments on the recent " strikes : " Tho railroad strike has probably jast failed to become a social war. The follios which have been committed by citizens in these riots are, we bolieve, without precedent. On Tuesday, for example, a crowd assembled around a crippled train in Reading, Pa., as the reporters teil us, "out of mere curiosity," and several of them were killed. One would suppose that the simplest things were understood by American citizens, and among the ABC matters of riots is the duty of citizens not in arms to attend to ther own business, and not to swell mobs " out of mere curiosity." Auother stupidity is the effort of respectable newspapers to make political capital out of the social war. The ory for a standing army - at a moment when France is gasping in the clutches of standing army - is another proof that elementary politics need to be distributed over the land. Blunders may be expected from müitia oommanders, bat the evil is small in comparison with the greater evils of military gOTernment. It will appear when the mist clears (it is already clear in Pittsburgh) that shooting was put off too long, that making speeches and repeating the Kiot Aot were kept up evorywhere until authority lost moral control of the mobs. It will alao be clear that common sonso in the oitizen ought to have put him at once agaiust the rioter, and that there could have been no law-breaking without the shameful neutrality of citizens.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus