Ste. Genevieve Herald Ste. Genevieve, Mo. Saturday, July 21, 1883 The government lamp, usually kept in the Big Field, having been hung on the lower ware house on the approach of the high water, was stolen during the late flood. The person who took it, will not be prosecuted if the lamp is returned within a week's time from date. After that tme a reward of $10 is offered for the conviction of the thief. JACOB KRUSE Prof. D.M. BREWER. a native of Perry county and, at present director of BREWER's College of Dramatic Art, willl give a dramatic entertainment at Union Hall on July 31. As the Prof. is a professional elocutionist and a master in the dramatic art we are satisfied that the entertainment will be appreciated by the good people of Ste. Genevieve as an intellectual treat of the highest order. We hope to see a crowded house. RANK INJUSTICE Our County Court seems to be parculiarly unfortunate in its interpetations of the law. But a short time ago it succeeded in making itself the laughing stock of the Co. by its attempts to set aside the Constitution of the State by ordering bonds to be issued to the amount of $10,000 for the purpose of building a new Court House and were only brought to their senses by the Attorney General of the State. It was natural to suppose that after such a fiasco, they would be more careful in the future. But it appears that they have not profited by past experience and have set themselves up as great constitutional lawyers and propose to run things their own way. So long as antics like the Court House bond business injured nobody it did not matter, by when by their arbitrary action they deny ment their just rights under law and entail extra expense of from two to three hundred dollars on various law-abiding citizens it is time to call a halt in real earnest. At the last term of court those of our saloon keepers whose licenses had expired applied in the usual form for their license for six months, and in several instances the licenses were granted and issued in regular form and should have been placed in the hands of the Co. Collector for collection, but from some cause the Court changed its mind and ordered the Co. Clerk to change the licenses to the 4th of July, and in other cases only granted licenses to that period. The parties applied in the usual form for licenses for six months and those who had so applied supposed that their licenses had been so granted and did not know the contrary until they found the collector did not come around as usual to collect. In thus refusing to grant licenses for the usual period of six months, the Co. Court may claim that they were acting according to their understanding of the law, or that it was their royal perogative - as was the case under the old law - to refuse to grant any license at all. If the former is the case, they were badly mistaken in law, and if the latter, we would remind them that this is not an empire and that none of them are Bismarks. But in so refusing to grant them, and ordering them issued only until the 4th of July without notice to all the applicants they, the Court, were guilty of very unusual and unjustifiable conduct. The Supreme Court of the United States never decides any case without giving both parties a chance to be heard. Evidently, our Co. Court has been for so long accustomed to stand by and see our saloon keepers a prey of some of our Co. officers, that they have come to the conclusion that a saloon keeper has no rights that anybody is bound to respect. the State Auditor has decided that all licenses regularly issued before the 2nd of July are good until they expire, and every County in the State, so far as we know, has allowed the licenses to be renewed for the usual period of six months, as they expired. Indeed in many of the Counties the saloon keepers were allowed to some in at the last term of the Court before the new law took effect and throw up their unexpired licenses and take out a new license for the full six months. But our saloon men asked nothing of the kind; they only asked what they were justly entitled to under the law, that their licenses should be renewed "as they expired" for six months and, in denying that just and lawful right without giving them a hearing, the court has, to put it in the mildest form, acted very arbitrarily.