Feliciana Sentinel

LET THEM REMEMBER.

It is not our intention at present to denounce any member or members of the Constitutional Convention. Indeed, we earnestly hope that unpleasant task will never become our duty. On the contrary, we intend to defend and applaud them just so long as they deserve our praise. Nevertheless we are carefully noting their every action, and have to-day in the city of New Orleans, those who are in every way reliable, and who are keeping us posted relative to all that transpires, and just so soon as any of them show the least inclination to forget their people, they will be called to account by us through the columns of our paper. We however hope, and confidently believe no necessity will arise to warrant this denunciation. We are satisfied the bondholders will leave no stone unturned in order to secure, if possible the payment of their illegal, as well as their legal claims; nevertheless, examining the list of those who have been selected to frame our organic law we can but feel that our people and our State are safe. The members of the Constitutional Convention, however, must not lose sight of the fact that the people who have selected them are poor—that they have not yet recovered from the effects of reconstruction, Radical rule, radicalism and the failure of crops, overflows, pestilence, &c., and whose very wives and daughters are even to day toiling, many even in the corn and cotton fields, in order to obtain a scanty support for themselves and those dependent upon them. In short, then before our organic law makers become generous, they should become just. We do not either ask or desire repudiation. Far be it from our intention to even admonish an individual, a community or a State to refuse to pay that which is justly due. But we ARE opposed to the fraudulent and illegal debt saddled upon us by the Radical miscreants who too long infested and disgraced our State, and who, as it were, sucked the life blood from its very veins. We say sift the fraudulent from the honest—the illegal from the legal, agree to pay just so much of the latter as possible, add a fair but not grinding interest thereto until it is paid, and let the remainder, the fraudulent portion, go to the dogs, or to serve as a monument to perpetuate the remembrance of Radical intrigue and Radical dishonesty. This done, confidence will be restored as in the case of Georgia—State credit will go up instead of down, and prosperity and happiness once more bless our people. The country delegates, however, must keep their eyes open, and in each and every instance look well before they act. To befriend the bondholder—the man who cries for the pound of flesh—they must not rob a people who are now almost upon the verge of ruin. Let them repel the machinations of the bondholders. The people have reposed confidence in them, and they must not be betrayed. Let them keep their eyes open. We have confidence both in their judgement and their patriotism.—Patriot-Democrat.