Newbern Weekly Progress

The State Convention.

This body we fear is becoming an ulcerated sore on the body politic, and before it ceases to kick there is strong probability that the people will wish it never had existed. After the fall of Sumter, there being no difference of opinion in North Carolina as to which course the State should pursue in the then impending struggle, a Convention was demanded by the almost unanimous voice of the people, and when they voted for delegates to this Convention they did so with the understanding that the body was to assemble for the purpose of taking the State out of the old Union and putting her in the new Confederacy, and nothing else. The people who sent the gentlemen to Raleigh who compose this body never dreamed that they were to supersede the Legislative department of the State Government and go into the transaction of general business; nor had they the remotest idea that their entire Constitution was to be overhauled, amended and re-written by this body in the midst of a Revolution.

This is no time for altering the Constitution, nor are men however talented or exalted, who are looking daily with feverish anxiety to the mail for intelligence of a decisive battle on the banks of the Potomac in a frame of mind to alter or tamper with Constitutions. We say, and we but express the sense of the masses of the people in this section when we say it, that the present State Convention was not called with a view to any change in the Constitution, and further, that no changes are demanded at this time. How do we know even what kind of a State Constitution we shall want when the war is over. Very probably reforms could be made but now is not the time. The best thing the body can do is to adjourn sine die, and the sooner it does it the better will the people be pleased.

The Convention can do nothing to give the people plenty of the necessaries of life in these times of great scarcity; nor can the body, with all its power, wring salt from the great deep. We doubt not but the salt ordinance was conceived and brought forth in a spirit of faith and with the best possible intentions, but we feel sure that private enterprise along our coast will be able to manufacture salt and under-sell the State's Agent far enough to make the business of that gentleman very dull, if not a failure. We don't know anything of Dr. Worth—suppose he is death on physic, and possibly his physic is death on his patients, sometimes. But we can see no single reason in the world why the Convention should have gone to Randolph county for a "Salt Commissioner" whose only qualification is, probably, that he knows more about salts than he does about salt, when gentlemen who have made salt and who know something about it could have been procured on the coast. However as the traveling expenses of the "Commissioner" are to be paid by the State there might have been some reason after all for getting one far from the coast. It took the Convention several days to get the salt ordinance through and appoint the "Commissioner" at a salary of $1500 a year, and we'll promise to furnish a dozen better salt makers than the Doctor at a dollar a day each. We doubt not but Dr. Worth is a worthy man and that the appointment is as good as any that could have been made from the up-country, but we cannot but think the whole thing will be a failure. We certainly do not advise the people of this section to wait for the State's Commissioner to furnish them their supplies—we rather advise them to seek salt by private enterprise as soon as possible, believing that to be the most certain and economical way to get it.

We wish the members of the Convention a happy Christmas and a safe return to the scene of their labors on the 20th January.

We supported the two worthy delegates from this county but with no expectation that they were to be called on to do anything more than carry the State out of the Old Union and place her in the new Confederacy—certainly not for the purpose of altering or re-writing the Constitution of the State.

But it seems to us that all the checks and balances of government are giving way. First we had free suffrage—an unmitigated humbug,—next ad valorem, which was worse; and now we have a proposition by a member of the Convention to distribute the School Fund according to white basis. See extract from proceedings:

Mr. Thomas, of Jackson, introduced an ordinance looking to the distribution of the school fund on the white basis and for other purposes.

Push this iniquitous proposition through and the next step of the demagogues will be to propose that Representation be according to white basis.

Strange that people cannot be satisfied with existing forms of government when they have been prosperous under them and know them to have worked well.