A STRANGE ASSEMBLAGE.

Westport Times, Volume VII, Issue 1090, 18 July 1873, Page 3

A STRANGE ASSEMBLAGE.

Of all the extraordinary spectacles to be met with in the United States there can be none more extraordinary than that which is presented by the State Legislature of South Carolina which assembles at Columbia. The House of Eepresentativcs contains 121 members, and of them 91 are uetxroea, mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons ; seven belong [to the class known as ' mean whites,'; and the remaining 23 represent the white population generally. "Under a system of pr< - portional representation, there would bo 54 whites and 70 blacks. The Speaker is a negro, so is the clerk, and so is the chairman of committees ; while the lustrous nigritude of the chaplain is such as to defy competition. With about half a dozen exceptions, these colored gentlemen were formerly slaves, and it does not appear that any provision has yet been made in committee of supply for the establishment of one of Bimmel's scented fountains in the House during tho summer months. Some of the negroes are described by a friendly critic as men whose costume, usages, language, and deportment, are such as would grace the forecastle of a bueaneering vessel; while opposite to the grinning, chattering, voluble, and grimacing crowd of darkies, sit the few men, most of them white headed, who represent all that remains of the old civilisation of the state. They accept their destiny with a placid stoicism that is almost pathetic, and with a silent dignity like that which awed the Cauls when they broke into the presence of the Koman senators. Old in years, broken in fortune, and bankrupt in hope, the planters of South Carolina survey the rule of their former slaves with the resignation of men who, having hazarded all and lost all, refrain alike (from useless regrets and impotent reproaches. The New

York Tribune, which has always been the steady iriend of the southern strives, and the implaeabta enemy of their late ma ters, thus characterise* the black LogU atura of this prosita state:—" In the place of the old aristocratic society stands the rude form of the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw invested with the functions of < overnment.. It is dregs of the population habitated hi the robes of thoir intelligent predecessors, and asserting over them the rule of ignorance and corruption, through the inexorable machinery of a majority of numbers. It is barbarism. overwhelming civilisation by physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of his master, and patting that master under his feet." In such an assemblage debate degenerates into noisy riot, and the " mean white " who has any talent for intrigue, and any capacity for manipulating ignorant .and credulous negroes, Can command any majority for any purpose of jobbery and corruption. And this is the state which has produced almost as many orators and statesmen as that of Virginia!