Franklin Repository

A horrible, inhuman and nameless outrage committed on the person of a colored woman, by a gang of lawless and devilish white persons, in the Capitol Grounds, at Harrisburg, last week, bids us to remember that no race is free from the commission of crime; and that they who fabricate arguments for withholding his civil rights from the negro because of his proneness to violate the laws of the land and of his unavoidable ignorance, find the same reasons weigh a thousand fold stronger against their own than the colored race. We Republicans deny the force of argument in the one case, and of course it fails in the other. But they who admit and use it in the one, cannot escape from its legitimate conclusion in the other, with this condition added, which makes it still stronger, that they cannot plead the mitigation of ignorance. A report of the crime to which we refer will be found in our local columns, taken from the Harrisburg Patriot, a Democratic journal not likely to step beyond the truth in the account it gives.

This recalls to our recollection the outrages perpetrated by a colored man upon several respectable white girls, in this neighborhood, a few months ago, and the dishonest attempt of a Democratic journal in our midst to shift the responsibility of his crimes upon the Republican party. No man honestly believed that anything save the depravity of his own nature incited the negro boy, Cain Norris, to the commission of the crimes for which he was fairly tried and convicted, any more than he believes that the Democratic party is responsible for the outrages committed by persons of undisputed Caucasian blood at Harrisburg, upon a defenceless colored girl. Yet the inference is just as strong in the one case as in the other, and the conclusion just as reasonable. It was the trick of a political demagogue to seize the intense excitement which prevailed in the case of Cain Norris, when the calm judgment of men was unsettled, and turn it from the real offender, for the meanest sort of political effect; we know no words sufficiently expressive to portray the meanness. Here is an outrage with its changed circumstances perhaps as unmitigated in horror as that. Let us see what this same journal has to say concerning it. True, it affords the Democratic party no chance to make political capital out of it. The victim was only one of a despised race, and the criminal offenders were of unmistakable white blood. But that does not mitigate the offence in the eyes of the law. Besides, there does not seem to have been only one fiend here, but a dozen. The report says that eight of the offenders were arrested, and warrants were out for others concerned in it. Nor is there any excuse on the ground of ignorance of right or of the law. Their extraction is so honorable that their names are withheld from publication, on account of the respectability of their connections. They did not have any revenge to wreak upon the negro race, in the person of this woman, for fancied injuries to the white race, because the injuries have all been on the other side.

Perhaps, taking all the circumstances of these two cases, there is as little to be said in extenuation of the one which occurred last week, as of the other. Human nature is considerably lower than angelic nature, and statutes have been framed to protect the innocent and punish the guilty, not because we have negroes, or because the Republican party has been instrumental in restoring them their rights, but because crime has existed in every age and every land. We would suggest to our neighbors the danger of constructing political theories whose ghosts come back to haunt them. The example of the old fellow who was "hoist with her own petard" is worthy of contemplation, old as it is. The inventor of the guillotine was himself beheaded by it, and an old and popular poet sang:

"O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us,
It would frae mony a blunder free us."

The city election, in Washington last week, resulted in the choice of the Republican candidates, by an overwhelming majority. With the exception of riotous conduct on the part of colored voters at one of the polls, the quiet and order of the city was not disturbed. The prompt and energetic action of the police suppressed the disorder before it had time to become serious, but not until several of the rioters were wounded and some of the officers had received serious hurts. It seems, the disturbance was caused by some colored Republicans, who attacked another colored man voting the Democratic ticket. This man, Stewart, it is said has a number of colored men in his employ, whose wages he refused to pay unless they agreed to vote his ticket, which they refused to do, and hence the feeling aroused against him. Whether this is so or not we are unable to tell, and it makes little difference if it is. It furnishes no justification for the unlawful and riotous conduct of those who attacked him. The attempt of men, either white or black, to interfere with the free exercise of the right of suffrage should be severely put down. Too many election riots have occurred, of late years, in our principal cities, and all so far as we know by roughs voting the Democratic ticket, except this one in Washington, and not a single one of the offenders has been punished that we ever could learn. We hope they will not be a precedent in this case. We don't want the Republican party to encourage such disorders by allowing Republicans who interfere with the rights of an opposing but lawful voter at the polls to escape punishment. The voter who will use violence is no Republican, and has mistaken the party with which he ought to affiliate. He has failed to understand the first principle of republicanism, which concedes to all persons the same rights it claims for its own voters.

We protest, however, against the effrontery of those Democratic journals which charge the negro's unfitness to vote, from this disorder in Washington, and conveniently forget the commission of similar outrages at the polls in Philadelphia and New York within the last year by white Democrats.

The Harrisburg Patriot and Union thinks that the ratification of the 15th Amendment would be political industrial suicide to Pennsylvania, because it would largely increase the number of representatives in Congress from the Southern States.

How will enlarged representation in Congress from the South endanger Pennsylvania? If the Southern States are entitled to representation on the same basis with Pennsylvania and the other Northern States, what right have we to object to their being increased in the same ratio? Can it be wrong for Pennsylvania to do right, and if so, how?

This is the last argument of the Democracy against the 15th Amendment. Don't pass it, gentlemen, because as it stands now a two-fifths of the colored population of the Southern States is not represented, while all of the North is If you pass it the entire population of the South will be represented, just as that of the North, and though it is but just and fair to do so, just so much of our power in Congress will be taken away from us.

This is blowing hot and cold with a vengeance. We are surprised and startled at the facility with which Democratic journals change their positions. Accustomed as we have grown to hearing them cry out against the injustice of the Radicals against the Southern States, we were not prepared to find the Patriot take a new departure, this time urging that the same Radicals have been conceding entirely too much to the South. Well, which we have been forced to hear so much, boiled down, resolves itself into hatred for the Republican party, just what we always thought it was. Will the Democracy of the Southern States please make a note of it?

About nine o'clock on Tuesday evening, the 8th inst., a colored woman named Lucy M'Gill was ruthlessly attacked and outraged by young ruffians of this city. The heinous crime was enacted in the immediate vicinity of the monument, where a number of roughs had congregated. As the woman was passing in company with a colored female associate, one of the ringleaders clutched her, while another, assisted by three of his friends, succeeded in violating her person. Several others subsequently attempted to perpetrate the same crime, but were deterred from its accomplishment by the struggles and cries of the woman. The other female in the meantime escaped. In addition to those participating in the outrage, a number of their friends were in close proximity viewing the affair. Two of the principals were yesterday held in the sum of $800 to answer the charge preferred by the prosecution. Five of the by-standers were also bound over as witnesses in the same amount. Others are yet at large. The wretches implicated by the evidence of the outraged woman are well known in this vicinity, on account of their prominence in several disturbances that occurred a few months since. Were it not for the humiliation it would bring to their family connections, we would publish their names in conspicuous characters, and let the people know the miscreants who have so wantonly violated common decency. They are all white men, while the victim of their licentiousness is a black woman. It is hoped the guilty parties will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Too much leniency has heretofore been shown ruffians in this city, and it is high time that it give way to justice. The peace and quiet of the community demand that an example be made of those who have repeatedly instigated disturbances and capped the climax of their infamy by committing a deed that should mantle their cheeks with shame and cause them to welcome the walls of a prison as a screen from the gaze of an indignant people. - Harrisburg Patriot.