The Daily Phoenix

THE APATHY OF CONSERVATIVES.

The Tax-Payers' Convention was a movement which every man in the State will admit was not causeless or improper. Its lack of real strength arose from the fact, that it was not the uprising of an agitated people, but was the attempt on the part of a few earnest and public-spirited men to arouse the people to action. Instead of being the many forcing the few to give expression to their desires, it was the few directing the attention of the many to existing and contemplated abuses.

Sometimes such movements succeed but rarely is it so, especially in a republic. In France, the revolution was started from above and the masses were aroused to a sense of their rights, by the teaching of aristocratic philosophers; but in that case, the people soon took control and cut off those leaders who refused to move fast enough. Such has not been the case with the tax-payers' movement in South Carolina.

In the convention, there were about one hundred elected delegates. The County meetings which elected them did not probably average fifty citizens each—say five thousand persons in all. In Charleston, not two hundred, out of a Conservative tax-paying population of many thousands, attended the meeting to appoint delegates. The disproportion in many other Counties was even greater. And since the adjournment, the apathy of the people has been equally marked. The fact is, the Republicans have thought more of and have been more irritated by the misgovernment of the past two years than have the masses of the Conservatives. The attempt to arouse the rank and file of the Conservatives has signally failed. But the movement has done a far more lasting and important good. It has aroused the rank and file of the Republican party, both in this State and throughout the Union.

Port Royal Commercial.