THE THIEVING CARPET-BAGGERS. 51 



and worthy Northern men, who, in the face of social proscrij^tion and 

 general obloquy and scorn, stand firmly by the Repiiblican cause. 



There was a most urgent and special necessity for rigid economy 

 in the reconstructed States of the South, even aside from their im- 

 poverishment by war and the disruption of their industry by peace. 

 For despotic government has this advantage over free, that its 

 agencies are apt to be simj)le and cheap. The old Slave goverii- 

 ments of the South were thoroughly aristocratic, and they were 

 very rarely corrupt or prodigal. The planters paid most of the 

 taxes ; they decided who should be legislators ; and they did not 

 iibide jobbers. Legislative stealing was almost an unknown art 

 among them. Then they had no public support of the poor ; each 

 subsisted, after a fashion, his own iised-up slaves. The Poor 

 Whites lived or died as they might ; and, except for the Whites or 

 two or three gi'eat cities, there were no public schools : and tliis 

 made government cheap and taxes light. 



With Emancipation, came a great change. There was an urgent 

 demand for free schools, and the school-houses had to be built, to 

 begin with ; for the public support of paupers, White and Black, 

 and thei'e were no alms-houses ; and so with many public institu- 

 tions. Just when the people were poorest, they were required to 

 bear the heaviest public expense, though only accustomed to the 

 lightest. Dissatisfaction and complaint were inevitable ; but every 

 eflfort should have been made, every nerve strained, to mitigate them 

 by vigorous economy. I regret to say that the reverse was the 

 course pursued in some States by men who rode into power on the 

 artilleiy wagons of the Union, under the flag of Emancipation. 



The public is often heedlessly unjust. Let a Government have 

 10,000 ofiicial subordinates in power, of whom 9,900 are honest and 

 true men who do their duty faithfully, while barely 100 are robbers 

 and swindlers, the public will hear a great deal more about the 100 

 robbers than about the 9,900 true men. The 100 stand out in the 

 public eye — they are always doing something which exjioses them 

 to the scornful gaze of the multitude — while the honest and true 

 men pass along silent and unobserved, and nothing is said, very lit- 

 tle is thought, of them. All attention is concentrated upon the 100, 

 who are deftxulting, and stealing, and forging, and running away. 



Well, gentlemen, the thieving carpet-baggers are a mourn- 

 ful fact ; they do exist there, and I have seen them. They are 

 fellows who crawled down Soiith in the ti-ack of our armies, gen- 



