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About Weekly constitutionalist. (Augusta, Ga.) 185?-1877 | View Entire Issue (May 9, 1866)
THE weekly constitutionalist The Protestant Episcopal Church lias spread abroad its branches in the South like the Cedar of Libenus. Its identification with the people in the late contest, the-death ot the heroic and godly Polk, the Bishop-soldier, on the field of battle, the consecration of its priest hood in every form to the welfare of the people, Elliott in the pulpit and Quintard in the bi vouac and hospital, have infused a living faith into a church which had suffered under the charge of being wrapped in the shroud of a dead ritualism. To-day it exhibits a life and vijjor undreamed of ten years ago. ] heard a curious compliment paid to a clergyman who has been most succesful in building up the largest congregation in the State in proportion to the limits ol its parish, jt is said of him that his success was due to the fact that “he preached sermons fifteen minutes lone and never accepted an invitation to din ner,” — Ky. Correspondence of N. Y. Neics. The Orator of the Day at the Late >’egro Mob in Norfolk.—The Norfolk Old Dominion thus speaks of this man : We intend, for the respect we have for our people, regardless of color, to show up this man Baker in all his enormities, trom the 19th of April, 1861, when a Confederate soldier, to liis desertion. His joining the Union service under the subterfuge of penitence ; his opera lions in the Collector’s office, under G. W. Singleton, and the mode and manner of his re tirement. Such delectable wretches, disgraced and driven from respectable society , by their sneaking subterfuge, use every means to ope rate upon the credulity of the colored people, by instilling into their minds false prejudices. The riot of Monday was the result of such teachings —“ and we know whereof we affirm.” A Decent Nigger Newspaper.—The Mo bile Nationalist, a nigger journal, owned and edited by niggers, has a sensible nigger corres pondent at New Orleans, wlio is not in love with the Bureau. He says: “A thousand times better would it be for the colored man were it abolished, for, instead of being a safe <mard or protection for the freedmen, it is only a place in which freedmen’s rights are bartered away; it serves only to engender bitterness and hatred in the hearts of the very people with whom we expect to live, die and be buried. * * * The sooner it is out of the way the better for all parties concerned.” We always knew that the better class of negroes objected to the Bureau as strongly as the whites, and we are glad to perceive that their opinions are getting into print in a way that can throw no doubt over their genuineness. The Charlotte Railroad—Barbecues to the Hands. —It will be remembered that we published, some time ago, that in order to stimulate the hands engaged on the road, a bar becue and treat were offered to the winning parties on either end of the line. White labor was exblusively used on one end of the road, and Africans, exclusively, on the other. It seems to have been a di aw game, and both corps of labors enjoyed their barbecues on Sat urday—the whites at Lightwood-Knot Springs, and the Africans at Killian’s Mill. They de served a great deal of credit for the energy dis played—sixteen miles of track having been laid in five weeks. Military Districts Abolished. —It is re ported that the military districts of Charleston, l’ort Royal, Eastern South Carolina and West ern South Carolina, together with the sub districts therein, are ordered to be abolished.— These districts are to be divided into twelve military posts, named afe follows: Charleston, Colleton, Georgetown, Hilton Head, Lawton ville, Beaufort, Darlington, Columbia, Aiken, Chester, Anderson and Unionville. These posts are to be garrisoned by seven regiments ol volunteer troops, among which will be the One Hundred and Twenty-eighth United States negro troops. A curious item of statistics in the French pa pers illustrates the superstition of the Parisians. It is observed that on Fridays the omnibus travel of Paris diminishes in proportion of twenty-five per cent.—so strong is the super stitious avoidance of doing anything that can be helped on that “ unlucklv ” day. It is also further remarked, that when Friday happens to fall on the 13th of the month, the omnibus re ceipts decrease at the rate of fifty per cent. The section in which lumber is found in Col orado has twenty-five saw mills, and ten flour mills have been set up within the last few years. The quartz mills in the State are counted at over one hundred and fifty, costing $4,000,000. They should average, if all were running on medium ores, not less than $23,000,000 per year. Wages rule at $5 per day. In addition, a resident at Golden City, is soon to erect a blast furnace and rolling mill at that point. Plantation Prospects in Texas.—The Lalveston Bulletin, of the 15th, says: Gen. Gregory has returned from an extended tour in the interior, whither he had gone on a tour °f inspection. The General reports that the laborers are at work, the cotton mostly well up and doing finely. He says that the planters are all satisfied—that unless the worm, or some other unavoidable cause intervene, the crops will be larger than were ever made before. Congressional Immorality.—The drunken ness, personalities, indecency and fanaticism of the present Congress will make it infamous. — All the vices, blackguardism, treason, ineffleien ty and dishonesty of the age, seem assembled *n the Capitol at Washington. It is long past the time that this disgraceful concern should have adjourned. Let it dissolve, and let the People prepare to elect something which will properly represent the nation. — Chicago Times. Gen. Robert E. Lee.—This distinguished Southerner and military chief, the Raleigh Pro gress learns, is to be present at the June com mencement, at Chapel Hill., N. C. It is ex pected that he will address the students. This "will [jive additional interest to that usually at tractive occasion. The freedwomen in Columbus, Mississippi, go shopping in their carriages and call out the dr? goods clerks to serve them. Bonner's IIISTORY—If this book, says the Baltimore Gazette, were an isolated specimen of blackguardism and nonsense, we should re frain from any comment on it. But it is one of many thousands written with the same disre gard of truth and decency. The individuals who get up these diatribes are never weary of proclaiming their own virtues and deprecating the wickedness of the people of the South. Tlicj insist that the latter can only be regarded as “reconstructed” when they shall have ac cepted the new Evangel that is preached by the disciples of Beecher, Stevens and John Brown. This, we venture to assume, they do not intend to do. They fought with superb courage in vindication of their Constitutional rights and liberties. They lost that battle and they accept the result. But they do not intend to acquiesce in any sentence that condoms them to degrada tion. We trust, therefore, and believe, that rather than hold any fellowship with people of Mr. Bonner’s stamp, they will determine to re main unreconciled and unreconstructed forever. Northern Pharisees.—Were the scurviest thief in New York, says the New York World, to appear at any one of the religious meetings now going on in some of the churches in this city, and there declare his repentance, and avow his conversion to a better life and his desire to unit? in the fellowship of those who profess to pursue it; and were his acts to bear out his words, he would be received, welcomed, re joiced over, baptized, and admitted. The next day, after applying to erring men this test in morals and religion, many of these same persons would read the Sermon on the Mount at family prayers, and then go and de clare their approbation of a Congress which treats worse than the scurviest thieves our Southern fellow-citizens, who have erred in a matter of political Government, who declare it, who desire to renew their old political fellow ship and their allegiance to the Union and ]ts laws. These charitable men call themselves Christ ians. Frigid.—The coolest specimen of impudence of modern times is a recent speech of the bot tled hero of Big Bethel, who declares that he was “ impoverished by the late rebellion!” This declaration can be warranted as a capital substitute for ice. Let all who read it cut it carefully out of their newspaper and use it as a refrigerant where Ice is not to be had. We have pasted the speech up in our offie, which lias with a Southern exposure, and we expect to wear winter clothes and keep up a fire during the summer months, if it remains where it now is.— Richmond Times. Mr. Clay’s Treatment in Prison.—A gentleman who was in company with C. C. Clay after his release front confinement, says that he complained much of his treatment while in prison, and he would surely have wasted away in a few moths had he continued longer in the fort. He has changed much since he gave himself up to the authorities, and is now quite gray and haggard in ap pearance. Sickles Banished.—The President, says the Examiner, not wishing to raise another Radi cal storm about his ears, has forborne to recall General Sickles directly from the military con trol of South Carolina, where he had made himself particularly offensive by his acts of tyranny, and he chooses to get rid of him by sending him abroad as Minister to the Hague. He leaves his country for his country’s good, and we do hope that the Dutch may not object to him and send him back. Hard on Jeems.—The border ruffian who edits the Kansas Border Sentinel, is very angry with Senator Jim Lane, of that State, for his vote against the Civil Rights bill, and exclaims in his wrath: “ Poor, God-forsaken wretch, may hell’s hottest hole receive him soon.”— This is the reward Lane gets from some of his constituency for his one solitary attempt to re deem his character. Sickness and Death from Eating Cat fish. —Quite an excitement was created in Washington, on Thursday, in that portion of the city known as “ Murder Bay,” by the sudden illness of seven contrabands from eating cat-fish, by which a man and woman died, and the rest mad’e seriously sick. The circumstances created a panic, on the supposi tion that the disease was cholera. Highly Religious.—ln Connecticut parish a subscription paper was Tecently started for the support of preaching, and laid first before the minister for his subscription, as a member of the parish. He subscribed twenty dollars ;no other one subscribed as much. His pay that year was less than four hundred dollars, includ ing his own subscription. A Victim to Cholera. —Dr. Slater, the Health Officer of Halifax, who,' in the faithful discharge of his duties, proceeded on board the cholera ship England, to alleviate the distress of the afflicted, was stricken down with the disease, and died on the 6th inst. Loyal Reading.—A correspondent of the N. C. Presbyterian calls attention to the fact, that some of the school books published at the North and brought to the South for sale con tain offensive and insulting chapters in regard to the late war, besides being false and unfair. Grrard Btith, formerly Mayor of New Or leans, and now foreman in the composing room of the Picayune, in that city, has been nomi nated as candidate for alderman; rice J. O. Nixon, resigned. A New Orleans letter says that Hon. J. P. Benjamin has already taken rank as “a good, first-class lawyer” in England; and that he will settle there permanently. Gen. Cabell.—General Cabell, w ho was rap tured with General Marmaduke, during the Confederate invasion of Missouri, is keeping a boot and shoe store at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Reported Killed.—lt is reported that the notorious Joe Fauber, so long a terror to East Tennessee, was killed last week in Kentucky, whither he had fled for safety. (Correspondence of the New Tork Herald. The Confederate Colony at Cordova. Cordova, Mexico, March 3ft, 1866. It is somewhat remarkable that with such constant and regular communication as exists between New York and the City of Mexico, and so many Americans making the journey to and from the two cities, such ignorance of the route traveled should exist in the United Steamship lines ply from Vera Cruz tc New l ork, England, France and Spain, alLthe lines touching at Havana. Persons from T»e West and South can take a steamer at New Or leans for Havana, at which port he will lie de tained but a few days at most, awaiting a steam er for Vera Cruz. Upon arriving at Vera Cruz, if bound for Cordova, Orizaba, Puebla or the City of Mexico, the traveler, in order to avoid delays upon the route, should procure a through ticket to his place of destination, oth erwise he may be delayed days, or even weeks, avyniting a chance seat in the dilligence. The railroad is completed only to Passo del Macho, a miserable collection of huts; and at this point a traveler’s trials, unless he has secured his passage in the dilligence, begin. The valley of Cordova, situated in the moun tains, sixty-five miles from Vera Cruz, is 2,800 feet above the level of the sea, and for salubrity of climate, beauty of scenery and fertility, is unsurpassed auy where in the world. The same description of country extends from the Paueroe river, at the mouth of which is the city of Tampico, to Tehuantepec. Cordova, however, is the most elevated of these lands, and consequently the most healthy. The alti tude of the city, and the proximity of the snow clad peak of Orizeba keep a uniformity of temperature almost unknown elsewhere, the greatest range of the thermometer being seventy-five degrees, never falling below sixty five nor rising above ninety degrees, the weather being similar to warm days in May in the lati tude of Philadelphia. The city was one of the first commercial importance under the rule of Spain, exporting immense quantities of sugar, brandies, fruits and coffee, but has fallen into decay, and is only known abroad as a coffee mart and as the seat ot the American colony in ] Mexico. Cordova contains possibly five thou- I sand inhabitants, including'a regiment of French J and Austrian soldiers, and about one hundred I and seventy-five Americans. The number of i Confederates who have sought asylum in j Mexico, I am assured, does not exceed twenty- I five hundred, of whom not more than two hundred and fifty are in Cordova valley. But three members of the Richmond Congress are I in the Empire—Senator Oldham, of Texas ; | Judge Perkins, of Louisiana, and Wilkes, of Missouri. Members of the House Conroy and. Parsons, of Missouri, were murdered by the Mexicans last summer at Toro, between Monterey and Matamoras. Governor Harris, of Tennessee, is at the colony,nine miles south west of Cordova, engaged in clearing up his land and making ready to plant a crop this season. Governors Reynolds (of Missouri) and Allen are in the city of Mexico—Allen editing the Times ami Reynolds anting as agent of tlio American and Mexican Emigrant Company. V cry few Confederate field officers sought homes in this country, most of the emigrants being line officers and privates, young men without families, and too often without that industry and application needed to insure suc cess in any new country. Major General Sterling Price is at Carlotta ; Brigadier General Shelby has a splendid hacienda four miles from Cordova, on the Vera Cruz road; Major Gen- j eral Waterhouse is a contractor on the railroad, ! and Brigadier General Lyon is at the head of a surveying party near Tudpan. These are the only Confederate generals cast of the city of Mexieo. Major General Magruder is Surveyor General of the Government colonization enter prise. Wilcox talks of returning to the States, and Hindman of going to Yucatan. These are all residing in the city. Brigadier General Slaughter, of the old army, is interested in mills in the valley, and Hardeman, of Texas, is sur veying on the Pacific slope of the mountains. Os all these, General Shelby is the most ener getic and enterprising, and consequently his prospects are more flattering than any other American’s in the country. Besides working I his hacienda, he runs large wagon trains from j the railroad terminus at Paso del Macho to the city. His wagons are all of Yankee manufac ture, are drawn by ten mules each, and every wagon carries a load of six thousand or seven thousand pounds, the freight of which is from S3OO to $350. Major General Jubal Early passed through this city yesterday, en route for Havana, where lie will probably locate, as he had become very much dissatisfied with Mexieo. He is writing a history of his campaigns, which can hardly fail proving interesting, even if it be not entirely reliable. General Bee is a ship broker in Havana. Commodore Maury re cently went to France after his family; but it is very probable that he will remain in Europe, as latterly he has been out of favor with Maxi milian.' Judge Perkins was formerly one of the largest cotton planters in the United States, and se cured a portion of his wealth belore leaving Louisiana. He has a small coffee plantation adjoining this city, and is about opening an other at Carlotta. Judge Perkins is the only Confederate, except Kirby Smith and staff, who brought with him any considerable amount of means ; the others are poor, and are obliged to get their living as best they can. The gentle men mentioned, with one or two exceptions, have gone to work witli a determination to re trieve their fortunes that bodes success ; they are industrious and exergetie, bearing the trials find privations to which they are subject with rare courage and equanimity, never once re verting to the sacrifices which they made to the cause which they espoused and whose downfall proved their own ruin. Judge Olfiham, form erly chief justice of Texas, has turned photo grapher, and is in business in this city. The Judge has also turned author, and is engaged upon the last sheets of a work entitled “A His tory of a Journey from Richmond to the Rio Grande, from March 30 to June 29,1865; or die Last Days of the Confederate States.” This hook will cause a commotion as soon as pub lished, and will doubtless involve its author in some half dozen fights. lie is unsparing in his expose, which his position as member of tiie Confederate Senate gave him ample opportuni ties of making. He lashes certain Cabinet ministers and general officers severely, and does not spare President Johnson or Federal com manders. The book will prove vastly popular from its independence, as well as from its gene ral character, and be a valuable assistant to future historians. Most of the American settlers live around Carlotta, anew village laid out by the colonists, and named In honor of the Empress. Carlotta lies nine miles southeast from Cordova, in a splendid section of country. As yet the town boasts of but three houses, if such they may be called, being mere bamboo huts, but five or six others are in course of construction. The best and largest house belongs to General Price, is bdilt of bamboo, thatched with flag and Stalks, arid contains two rooms. A grove of mango trees near the casa afford a cool and inviting retreat for the old soldier, and here he may be found at all hours, seated upon a chair of bis own rnanufactnre, entertaining his numerous visitors, giving advice to settlers, cracking jokes with old companions in arms, or giving orders respecting the cultivation Os his planta tion. Everything is of the most primitive de scription, the chairs and tables being the Gen eral's own handiwork. General Price is not a little of a “ Yank,” and is about as ingenious and handy as any New Englander. Governor Harris and the General are inseparable com panions, living together until the Governor’s house shall be completed. The town is regularly laid out around a large square, which is covered by a natural growth of trees, among which is a grove of mangoes, the most beautiful of shade trees, whose inter lacing boughs and thick, glossy foilage com pletely exclude the sun’s rays, affording a de lightful retreat during the heat of the day. Each member of the colony is allowed one town lot, if he be unmarried; if married lie is entitled to two lots. Thirty lots have been taken up, and a number of others will be se cured as soon as surveyed. In a few years Car lotta will be the most pleasant town in Mexieo. It will be built alter American style, with a de gree of beauty and comfort elsewhere unknown in the Empire, and the society will he formed from ainono- the t,ost educated families of the South and West. The first and only American lady in the town is the wife of Dr. Wharton, of Virginia. General Price’s family isexpee.ed to arrive in the next steamer, and several other families will make Carlotta their home within a few weeks. Colonists who arc heads of families are al lowed a section of six hundred and forty acres of land ; single men half that amount —the land to be located at the will of- the settler. The soil around Carlotta produces most wonder fully. Sugar cane needs replanting but once in fifteen years, and the cane is of a size never dreamed of in the United States. After plant ing no culture is needed, and the mills can be kept going throughout the year. Spain always considered her colonies mere dependencies to add to her own wealth and greatness, suffering them to produce or manufacture nothing that might evenly indirectly compete with the pro ducts and maufaetures of the mother country. Under this policy the culture of grapes was prohibited in Mexico enst of the city ; but, as sugar and coffee could not he raised in Spain, their culture was encouraged in Mexico. Cor dova valley was the great coffee region of the New World, and to this day are the uncultivated lands filled with wild coffee, of the same kind and quality as that raised upon the plantations. Sugar, in olden times, competed with coffee for the trade of Mexico, and t his valley boasted as large and magnificent sugar houses as any upon the continent, in the immediate vicinity of Carlotta are the ruins of haciendas of an extent almost fabulous, and the first cost of which would appal the largest American planter. The buildings upon the hacienda of San Miguel, with the roads and bridges, must have cost their owner over half a million of dollars, and the improvements upon the hacienda Correl, within two miles of San Miguel, were not made for less than four hundred thousand dollars. Upon the first of these haciendas twelve hun dred slaves were worked, and upon the latter seven hundred. Little else than sugar was pro duced upon these estates, and there are in the valley oyer a dozen haciendas of similar magni tude. These lands are in no wise deteriorated, ami will produce as good cane as ever. General Price is busy preparing for coffee, corn and tobacco. He is an old tobacco raiser, and thinks lie can show the natives a thing or two in his line. The tobacco is of superior quality, similar to that of Havana, and if prop erly cured will bring equally as high prices. The Negroes of Hayti. baby pot pie. A correspondent of the New York Herald, writing from Port au Prince, makes the follow ing statements, from which some idea may be formed of the progress of the negroes in an island which they have governed for so long a time : The fact appears to me so he simply tilts, that j the people are extremely ignorant—l will not use a harsher expression—and being in that | condition, are easily made to swallow any thing j they are told by the emissaries of Gcflrard’s enemies, who are very numerous. The hands of the Government are in consequence weak, for it has almost come to this, that Geffrard has but little else but the army to support him. A proof of this weakness is evinced by the conduct of the Government in acase of Oniism, where a party of several persons were discov ered at one of their frightful cannibal orgies, feasting upon cooked infants. Nothing was dope, because Geffrnrd is afraid. It is a great pity ; lor if no control be exercised, baby-pie will get to be more, and more extensively used, and it will be positively unpleasant to travel in j that country. Fancy your correspondent ar | riving at a hotel, very hungry and tired, and | having a disli of stewed babies’ lingers set be fore him. An old African once assured me that it was very nice eating, very tender and delicate; and he spoke from experience. Nevertheless, I would prefer stewed oysters. The Obiism practiced in Jamaica is of a different kind, though it has there, also, its cannibal features ; but it is for the most part confined to a study of poisons for the purpose of getting rid of obnoxious individuals, and some of the Obi men have a wonderful knowl edge of this branch of their profession. Some years ago an old Obi man died at Kingston who confessed, on his death-bed, some of the enor mities to which lie had lent himself by selling his services as a poisoner. Heaps of “yaller kivered ” literature could be made out of that old fellow’s confession. Avery respectable looking Obi man sold me Ids conjuring stick, which I keep as a great curiosity. He promised to get me an idol, but I was told by a friend not to expect it, and of course, was disappointed. Hitting all Around.—At a negro meeting held at the rooms of the Washington Union League on Wednesday night, the Hon. A. A. Bradley, a negro lawyer from Boston, recently requested to leave Savannah, walked into the President, the Senate, Rebel Generals and the Freedmen’s Court after the following fashion : He spoke of the action of the Senate on the admission of Colorado, which he called a step backwards, as admitting Colorado with a con stitution rejecting black voters. He then treat ed on the reconstruction question, and said nobody in the South can he elected to office un less he was a rebel general. The mayor of our city (Savannah) was a rebel general. When our Moses ordered an election we could elect no one but a mayor who bad ordered a negro to be imprisoned and whipped just for wishing to be loyal. He (the Savannah mayor) is now hand and glove with the Fenians, and had the speaker arrested>and put into Fort Pulaski for one year for circulating a petition, while John Mitehel was released to make trouble. He spoke of United States arms being sold to ne groes by the soldiers, and an order being subse quently issued to reclaim all the arms, and therefore the United States was guilty of steal ing. {A voice, “ Shame.”] The speaker then detailed several highly colored narratives of outrages on the negroes in the South, and was severe on the Freedman’s Bureau Court because rebel lawyers were admitted to those courts while colored lawyers were excluded. The Washington Artillery.—We devoted a paragraph, yesterday morning, to this celebrat ed corps, a synopsis of whose history has been published in the Picayune. An old member called upon us yesterday for the paper—he had been taken prisoner late in the war, and had lost the run of the history of his command. We lent it to hiru, for we could not absolutely part with so interesting a document, and we watched the glistening eye with which he read the final record “guns buried and carriages destroyed.” We take this occasion to observe that, so far as our recollection extends, this is the only artil lery corps which has become historically re nowned. History and biography are full of notices of this and that regiment or brigade, and the tenth legion shares the immortality of Rome’s greatest military genius, but it was re served for the Washington Artillery to inscribe its title, first of that arrn, upon the scroll of fame, as a distinct command. [Jackson (Miss.) Clarion, 'Mh. The immigration to Kansas now averages, it is thought, aboat one thousand persons per day. The larger portion go to Southern Kansas, where the prairies are already covered with green grass, President Johnson's Veto. The Radicals li’iwf to Force the Negro to a franchise Refused to Millions of English La borers— The Colored Citizen to be Defined at once, and Reconstruction to bt Indefinitely Postponed, etc. [From tlio London Times, April 10.) Having just had to accept from our chief West Indian possession an almost total sur render of the right of self-government, and be ing engaged at home in the business of consti tutional reconstruction, wc cannot help sympa thizing with all three branches of the American Legislature, now bronght to a dead lock by the “irrepressible negro.” That personage has just been proved', by wager of battle, and by general acclamation, “a man and a brother;” his chains have been broken, and lie is a slave no more. He is even permitted to tight for hi s country and for equal laws. But then come s the difficulty. Is he also a citizen, and must h e be admitted witliiii.tlie pale of the Constitution, as we say at home V The question has agitated parties considerably in America, for it is ob vious that very little has been done by changing the slave into a pariah, and that, such is human nature, if the negroes are allowed no voice in making the laws they will be much at the mercy of their old masters. As well he the slave of one man as of a State—nay, better, some think, for the one man must care' for the slave at feast ns much as lie does for his cattle, whereas the State may only regard him as a public enemy. There are zealots there who think this vast ex penditure of men and money lias been to little purpose if the negro is still to be excluded from civil right—in fact, to It#nothing hut “a man and a brother.” The Civil Rights bill is the Re form bill of the day at Washington. The I’resi dent, representing the common sense and practi cal wisdom of the community, and not wishing to saddle himself with new and insuperable difficulties, has, however, vetoed this bill. The great work of the day is the reconstruction of the Union, and it is held that this can he done better without previously putting the negro into a status altogether new to him. Ills freedom itself is difficulty enough, and it is not necessary to add his civil equality and citizenship. It is observable that the question is not made to turn on the merits of the negro. Nobody thinks it necessary to assert either that he is wise, temperate, honest and independent, or the contrary. People do not even seem to ask how tin- negro i could vote and act if left to himself. There can be no doubt of President Johnson’s warm and strong feeling for the race, and his hearty desire to make the best bargain for it within the compass of ciremnstanees. Even his pride as a politician is committed to tills, as well as his philanthropy. The reasons which have led to his veto are reasons of Btate, which is only a phrase for the reasons which any sensible man feels better than he can explain—better, •crimps, than he can always venture to avow. There are matters of which a thousand people may he fully and equally cognizant, though not one will allude to them, for he knows well that somebody will call him a libeller, and the rest will stand by to hear him so railed. Why can not the negro tie declared a citizen and invested with all the rights of man ? The real answer is that he is not o citizen, and cannot be made a citizen by a proclamation or a law. We have, unfortunately, hrd a little experience of our own in this matter. We gave the Jamaica negro, in common with his white master, civil equality and the right of self-government, and see how it has ended. All the negro's instincis and habits go in the other direction. He is careless, credulous and dependent; easily excited, easily duped, easily frightened; always the ready vic tim of the stronger will. He is material for the hands of anybody who wishes to make use of him. furcated with full political rights, the race must be a magazine of mischief. Iri Jamaica it appears that the negroes would imbibe at a day’s notice any absurd delusion as to the authority and wishes of the British Queen, of the Commissioners, or anybody else; but wliat they were always looking for waß some thing to be given them, or something to he done for them, or some law to make them all rich, happy landowners, and tax free for ever. Such men are not citizens, call them so as we will. President Johnson, in his Message, takes into account the education and- circumstances, as well as the race. These four millions have, he abßcrved, just emerged from slavery ; and he notices tiiat the United States require a five years’ training in Republican Institutions ami habits before they admit, a European foreigner to citizenship. Even an intelligent Englishman must go through this probation. The slave must have at least as much—we fear very much more. He has his virtues. In some respects lie contrasts favorably with the white man. Nobody wishes to speak ill of him, but he sim ply is not capable of government in the souse we mean when we talk of commonwealths. It is not in him. Is this strange to us 1 Have we no class at home that even our most liberal politi cians are content to see out of the pale of citi zenship, like the four million negroes President Johnson is obliged to leave out of it V For the answer we state a single fact. Nobody on either side of the House of Commons has dropped a wired about the enfranchisement of aver twelve hundred thousand agricultural laborers, repre senting, as they do, a much larger population than the negroes in the United States. Nobody praises them; nobody abuses them; nobody proposes to give them votes; nobody thinks it necessary to give reasons why they should not have votes. But if the matter of the President’s message has a singular bearing upon our own present ease, so also lias liis argument. He is engaged upon the work of reconstruction, he says. He has to maintain the federative system of limited powers, and the barriers which preserves the rights of the States. This is an actual and tra ditional system arising out of a great variety of circumstances. For such an actual state of things the President declines to substitute a universal equality, with nothing to control it hut a central government. Our own ease is not so very dissimilar as it might seem. In our great variety of classes, conditions and interests, and the consequent variety of arrangements that have sprung out of them, we have a parallel to the relation of the United States one with another. There is no American statesman of note who lias not looked with dread to the pos sible day when a mere crowd of self-called citi zens might usurp all the rights and powers now residing in various communities, and adapted to their own local circumstances. America has had tier anomalies, but they have been amply justified by their working, and it has only been by their exaggeration that they have ever proved mischievous. Hut the first tiling, says the President, is to restore the balance, to repair the Union, to mend the barriers and retain as much as is allowable of the old state of tilings. After that, and in due time, he intimates cautiously, it may be necessary to proceed to an enlarged and comprehensive definition of the citizen. That is the order taken by a man who has hitherto shown singular sagacity and firmness. It is the precise contrary of the order taken by her Majesty’s advisers. Though, as it appears, with quite as great difficulties Before them as the President, and with quite as little intention of meeting those difficulties, they nevertheh ss will take, first, the definition of the citizen, partial and unfair as it must he, and postpone to the indefinite future the recon struction—-that is, in our case, the distribution of seats. They do not even propose, to enfranchise our miliums of field laborers —but they have a franchise to give and citizens to make ; and this they will do out of hand, let who may do the rest, if it ever be done. Crusty.—A whimsical old bachelor anecr inzly remarks that love, like the measles, is rather a juvenile complaint. “ Who,” he asks, “ever heard of a widow’s dying from mixing a broken heart with a six-pence worth ofarsenic?” Prohibited.—Mayor Withers, of Mobile, has prohibited the ringing of auction bells,— The practice was pronounced a nuisance.
