If a community persists in its refusal to avail itself of the right of self-government, that right should be abrogated until such time as it shall be able to guarantee not only willingness, but capability for self-government. Where anarchy exists, government has fled. Where a people supinely lay upon their backs and permit anarchy, are they longer entitled to the citizenship of a great state and of a greater nation? The people of Breathitt County, by their long years of inaction and submission to terrorization by a few, have shown that they do not or did not consider themselves longer the most potent factor in the conservation of order in society. Public sentiment had lost its health. The people of Breathitt County owe it to their manhood, their county, their state, to the nation, to redeem themselves. For the horrors of strife there have been published broadcast to the world. "Breathitt" has become synonymous with blood, murder, anarchy, the world over. We have read of it in foreign newspapers. The United States only recently demanded of Mexico that the disorders there, especially along the borders, must cease. The Federal government threatened that republic with war even, unless citizens of this country and their property are protected. Government might have found as good grounds for intervention in Breathitt during the past, and may yet--if the murder mills there do not some of these days shut up shop. America demands of foreign governments protection of the lives and property of our citizens. Yet, owing to the complexity of our governmental structure, it may not extend that protection to its citizens within her own territory. The outlawry along the Mexican border within the last three years has not been as great in proportion to size of territory and population involved as has been the destruction of lives in Breathitt County at intervals for years. Yet with regard to Mexico this government has seen fit to say that conditions along the border had become "intolerant" and must cease even at the risk of war. The people of Breathitt County are citizens of the United States, as well as of their State and county. As such they ought to hasten to restore the good name and the honor of the country to which they belong, and of which they should be proud. The murderous, lawless Mexican bandit is no more a knave than the American guilty of similar atrocities. There did come, a few years ago, a wave of reaction, an upheaval which brought into the limelight of publicity the fearful state of affairs existing there. Murders in the streets of the county seat and throughout the county had occurred with such frequency and boldness as to at last attract the attention of the press of the entire country. At last a man of wide prominence in the State was struck down. This man was J. B. Marcum, a United States Commissioner, and a trustee of Kentucky State College, as well as lawyer of prominence and a leading Republican.