Sausalito News, Volume 10, Number 6, 16 March 1894 — SEVERE CRITICISM. [ARTICLE]

SEVERE CRITICISM.

Ex-Mayor Abram S. Hewitt in his recent speech at the Southern Society in New York city, severely criticised the Southern statesmen of to-day. Though we consider Hewitt's speech untimely on

such an occasion and his criticism

unreasonably severe against the gentlemen now representing the old slave states in the House and the Senate, no serious,

sensible thinker will deny that what the old man said about the moral and mental

degeneration of leading men in the South as compared to the days when Clay, Crittenden, Calhoun, Brooks, Toombs, Bell, Benton and Houston thrilled Congress and the country with the splendors ol their eloquence, was in the main true. The wide contrast between a politician and a statesman is the same in every state in the Union; and for twenty years the political condition of things in the South has made it next to impossible for the real statesmen of that section to receive recognition. Why? For the simple reason, during that time there has been virtually but one party in existence in the Southern states which in the nature of things tends to bring only politicians to the front and drive statesmen to the rear. When a Democrat in Congress from Tenneasee returns home to stump his district for reelection, there is no Gus Henry or John Bell to clip his wings and cripple his tongue now, as was the case in the South when the Whig and Democratic parties were about evenly divided. All the leading men of to-day in the South belong to the same party and as an unfortunate consequence there can be no serious clash of mind against mind by which the possessor of the genius for government can be discovered. When the people of the South become able to loose sight of the

ex-Confederate soldier in looking for Congressmen and Senators, they will find out that the Clays, Bentons and Bells are not all dead, and the standard of their public men in the national legislature will loom up as in the days of yore. But so long as the dread of negro domination holds the people in a single party, no matter what its name, the ablest men of the Southern states will seldom be sent to Congress.

Though Hewitt's remarks were in very bad taste, displaying wonderful lack of judgement, in view of the occasion of his speech, there was a large amount of truth in what he said, all the same. Congress is cursed with quite a crop of pigeonheaded men from the South to-day.