New Orleans Republican

The Opelousas Journal notes as one of the indisputable signs of progress that the Bourbons of St. Landry now take their whisky straight with the colored voters. But the Journal does not approve the practice, and threatens to tell all it knows, or may find out about it. Our up country neighbor is partly right, and in a measure wrong in his strictures. He is right in discouraging the habit of treating and drinking for the purpose of securing political influence. Worthy candidates do not resort to this practice because they know they could not secure the confidence and support, of the good voters by such cheap bribery. But there is no objection to treating negroes with whisky for the purpose of getting their votes that can not be applied with equal force to treating white men for the same purpose. If two or more gentlemen desire to refresh themselves in each other's company, and, according to American custom, with one of the party to act as the host of the occasion, and the others as his guests, we can see no political offense in it, even though friendships thus begun lead finally to political support; and we must, in conceding a right to the enjoyment of this custom, at the same time concede the social right of each man to choose his friends on such occasions. Men usually form their social connections according to their tastes or whims—sometimes according to their prejudices—but so long as mutual gratification is the motive it is an arrangement with which the public have no concern. It is not always the case, and never, strictly speaking, quite correct in morals to indulge in drinking whisky on convivial occasions, though the custom is more general than it ought to be. If the Journal man exposes all the candidates who attempt to capture voters by plying them with country whisky it will simply discharge its duty, but if it confines itself to those who only attack the colored voters in this insidious manner it will but partially do its work, and let the greatest offenders escape. We are not hopeful that our contemporary will be strictly impartial in its new crusade against whisky drinking.