The New York Herald Newspaper, January 14, 1872, Page 6

NEW YORK HERALD | BROADWAY AND ANN STREET. JAMES GORDON BENNETT, PROPRIETOR, Volume XXXVIL......ssesssssceccesseseseNOe 14 AMUSEMENTS TO-MORROW EVENING, Ci NO TAND, OPERA HOUSE, corner of 8th av. and 324 st— ‘WOOD'S MUSEUM, Broadway, corner 36th st.—Perform- @nces afternoon and evening “LIS3LE Ret Rising To FIFTA AVENUE THEATRE, Twenty: Tux Nw Duaus oF Divouoe, al ogo WA aebtcrs THEATRE, Broadway and 13th street. — NIBLO’S GARDEN, Broad: ween Houston atreeta.—Biack Croom’ °e Fanen ant BOWERY I we ne} LCERATER, Bowery—Briganps or CaLaBLa— ST. JAMES' THEATRE, - wot JAMES" 71 Twenty-eighth street and Broad OLYMPIC THEATRE, B: i - ‘TOMIME OF HUMPTY Dower.” PERL BADE AR EAM AIMEE’S OPERA Bol UF — or La GuanpE Dvonssey. 1s pipeline inleiienan SeOOTH’s THEATER, Twenty-third st., corner Sixth av. — STADT THEATRE, Ni =. Gatien E, Nos, 45 and 47 Bowery.—Tur Opxna MRS. F. B. CONWAY'S BROO! - Comepims AnD Fancxs. reson Rectuign THEATRE COMIQUE, 514 Broadwav.— 18M6, NEGRO cere ac Ware ae UNION SQUARE THEATRE, Fourteenth at. - way.—NEGRO AOTS—BURLESQUE, BALLET, dor ont TONY PASTOR'S OPERA HOUSE, No. Bi — NEGRO EcorntRicitixs, BURLESQUES, ot sii BRYANT'S NEW OPERA HOUSE, “4 and 7th avs.—BRYANT’S MINSTRELS. Ae: ee SAN FRANCISCO MINSTREL HAL! — THE SAN FRANCISCO MINSTRELS. ee mcatyey NEW YORK CIRCUS, Fourteentn SOREN THE Ring, ‘Aononates bo. ey eee eis NEW YORK MUSEUM OF ANATO: —— IRNOK AND ART. PER Eyre LEAVITT ART ROOMS, WION OF ParnTINas, No. 817 Broadway.—Exuist- DR. KAHN'S AN, UAL } - Boxswow kee | ARATOMICAL MUSEUM, 745 Broadway. TRIPLE SHEET. New York, Sunday, January 14, 1872. =— CONTENTS OF TO-DAY’S HERALD, aaa |— Advertisements, 2—Adverusements. 3—Poor Fisk | Naughty Josie! The Long-Sought Love Letters at Last; Playtul, Passionate, Poetical, Pitiless and Penitent; Gushing, Glow- ing, Gloating and Grieving;' The Ups ana Downs and Ins and Uuts of Prince Erie's Fatal [nfatuation; How Treacherous “Dolly” Enmeshed “Sardines; “fhe Power Behind the fhrone;” Boss Tweed, Sir Morton Peto’s Partner and Lane Dining at sosie’s; “Everything as Nice as Pos sibie;? Stokes, the Weaker Element, Steps In: Throwing “oll on the Troubled Waters; Bleeding tne Heart for a Woman and the Pocket tor $159,000; the Quarrel, the Re- Conciliation and the Final Break; a Tangled Web of Lega! Weaving: the Modern Paris and His Judicial Apple of Discord; “a Strange, Eventful History,’? 4—Religious Inteliigence: Services _To-Day ; ABRALD Religious Correspondence; Forty- Jourth Street Synagogue—Political Move- ments and Views—Music and the Drama—The Smallpox—Is Black Benson a Bigamist ?— mantaea by Queens County—Driven 10 S—Mrs. Wharton: Commencing Another Act in the Baltimore Poisoning Drama; Great Num- ber of Witnesses Speaking in Behalf of the Accused; ‘Ihe Defence Closed; ‘the “Em- peror,” Professor Smitn, Adding to the State's ‘Testtmony—ls the Bank Rotten’ Eleventh Day of the Third Avenue Savings Bank Run— The Willlampsiurg Savings Bank—Uitizens' Rights Respected in Jersey—Fatal Accident— Forbearance of an Injured Wife—Ex-Comp- troller Gonnolly—New York City News— Brooklyn Affairs—Lecture on International- ism—Literary Chit-Chat—Fire Commission- ers—Police Mutual Aid Association—Work for the Police— Miscellaneous Telegrams, G—Editorial: Leading article, ‘Earnings of Labor at Home and Abroad—Facts and Suggestions Jor the Working Classes’—Amusement An- nouncements, NEW YURKK HEKALD, SUNDAY, JANUARY 14, 1872.—IrkKIPLE SHEET, Garaings of Labor at Home and Abroad— Facts and Suggestions for the Working Claseos. Recently the lower House of Congress Passed, after two days’ debate, a,bill which inferentially commits the federal government to interference in the delicate relations be- tween labor and capital in the United States. The measure merely provides for the appoint- ment of a commission to investigate those relations in their various forms; and if the effect of it were to stop there ita influence would probably be beneficial rather than hurt- ful. But it is to be feared that, the impulse being once given, the laboring classes will see in it another concession to their already extrava- gant demands, and that political demagogues will be only too ready to avail themselves of this new element and to keep alive an agita- tion which can only prove detrimental to all the interests of the country. This is a view of the subject which ought to have had full consideration before the measure was launched on Congress and which may still have its influence on the Senate when the bill comes up in that body. The measure, however, has not even the merit of originality—the English government having already gathered in and published the fruits of a similar investigation—not con- fined, however, to its own dominions, but ex- tending to all civilized countries. In 1869 Lord Clarendon, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, directed all the British consuls abroad to furnish reports as to the condition of the working classes in the various countries where they exercised their functions; and the re- ports thus received have been recently pub- lished by the government under the title of “Reports from Her Majesty’s Diplomatic and Consular Agents Respecting the Condition of the Industrial Classes and the Purchase Power of Money in Foreign Countries.” A copy of this most important public docu- ment will probably have been received by the State Department at Washington, or, perhaps, it may be found in the Congres- sional Library, in either of which places it will be accessible to our legislators and to the commissioners who may be appointed under the act now pending in the Senate. The in- formation contained in it will be found ex- ceedingly valuable in the dé@cussion of the subject, and, if it could reach the working classes of this country, it would teach them that, when compared with the like classes in other countries, their condition in life is a very enviable one, and that instead of evincing.dis- content with their lot, surrendering their free- dom of ation to trade unions and indulging in periodical strikes, a regard for their own best interests suggests their cullivating the most friendly relations with their employers and stimulating, rather than discouraging, the use of capital in industrial enterprises. We have not yet received a copy of the ‘‘British Parliamentary Report,” but we find an inter- esting abstract of it in a late number of the Revue des Deux Mondes, The information thus cbtained by the British government shows the condition of the laboring classes in regard to wages, cost of living and sanitary and social condition in thirty-one countries of the globe. The ab- stract before us is limited to five or six countries, presenting so many different degrees of civilization and prosperity, from those of Asiatic Turkey to those of tae United States. These two countries present Y—Editorial (Continued from Sixth Page)—News from France, England, Germany and Cuba— The Grand Duke's Hunt: General Sheridan and “Buffalo Bul’ Lead the Way; A Grand Battue on the Plains—The Crisis in New Or- leans—Mr. Bergh aud the Pigeon Sbooters— Miscellaneous Telegrams—Business Notices, ®—The Courts: Interesting Proceedings in the New York and Brooklyn Courts—Art in England— Murder in England: Rev. Jonn Selby Watson Convicted of the Murder of His Wife—College of the City of New York—Bergh's Superinten- dent—Sudden Death of a Journalist—The Can- the extreme types—the one the maxi- mum cf wretchedness for the work- ing classes; the other the maximum of comfort. Between these two extremes, and in the order of improvement as we go from east to west, come in Russia, Ger- many, Belgium and Holland. The compari- sons are naturally made with England, so that non Firing Case—Baron Pat Donnelly—The Philadelphia Navy Yara. @—The Ciiy Fathers: Meeting of the Board of Al- dermen Yesterday—The Custom House Com- mittee: Something More Avout the Seizures by Treasury Agents—Base Ingratitude— Suicide by Taking Poison—Financial and Commercial—Marriages and Deuths—Adver- usements. €0—Poor Fisk (Continued from Third Page)—News from Washington: Affidavits of the UMcers ol the Fldrida Sent to the State Department; General Butler on the Fish-Catucazy Quarrel— Advertisements Answered: Abuse of the HERALD Advertising Columns; Arrest of the Letter Writer; A Stop Put to Ali Such Tricks for the Future—A Disreputable Scoun- drei: The Kerosene Thrower Vaught—Ship- ving Intelligence—Advertisements, 41—Advertisements, 1Q—Adverusements, Tue Week IN WAL Street was marked by a sudden change in the money market from stringency to extreme ease. On Monday the rate was equivalent to about forty-five per cent per annum. Yesterday it dropped to as low as four per cent. Durins tne week stocks advanced two to three per cent, verifying the prophecies of ‘ta January rise.” Toe STocKWELG, Murper IN ExGianp.— The conviction of the Rev. Jobn Selby Watson, of Stockwell, England, for the murder of his wife, Anne Watson, subjects a clergyman of the Church to the penalty of death by hanging for the crime of deliberately taking away a buman life. The deed was committed in the early days of the month of October, 1871. The main features of the terrible affair are recapitulated in the HzraLp to-day. The murderer placed the dead body of bis wife in a box made to order, under his direction, “air-tight and water-tight,” in- tending to send it off by rail. The English police were too active for him. From papers which were found in Watson's house it would appear as if he had a brother who resided at one time in Grand street, Williamsburg, United States. Russia AND THE UNITED States.—Con- siderable excitement has been occasioned in diplomatic circles at Washington and else- where in reference to the intelligence from Russia, as conveyed through the Heratp's special despatch from St, Petersburg, giving the note of the Imperial Chancellor, Prince Gortchakoff, to Mr. Curtin, the United States Minister, relative to M. Catacazy, We publish to-day the evidences of the great interest evinced by the authorities upon the subject in the national capital, It seems that the Russian Chancellor does not accept the situation in the sense in which it was anticipated he would; in other words, the diplomatic quarrel has an application to himself, inasmuch as the Minister to Wasbing- ton was undoubtedly performing services for which he had received instructions from his government, aud any slur or misrepresenta- tion would naturally be resented from the latter quarter. the report gives us incidentally the condition of the industrial classes in that country also. The first province of Asiatic Turkey in regard to which we have detailed information is that of Kurdestan, or Armenia, of. which Erzeroum and Van are the principal cities. This extensive province contains 2,300,000 inhabitants, of whom about three hundred and fifty thousand reside in the cities and large towns, about one million two hundred thousand are employed in agriculture and 700,000 lead a pastoral life. The English Consul at Erzeroum gives a most lamentable account of the condition of these people, and attributes the poverty of this once flourishing region to the withdrawal of capital from industrial pursuits in consequence of political and social insecurity. The farms sre almost all in the hands of small proprietors, and are generally limited to eight acres in extent, The on ly employment for capital is in lending on usury; and that, of course, only aggra- vates the evil. The average earnings of a field hand are forty dollars, and of weavers— the principal branch of industry—from sixty dollars to one hundred and twenty dollars a year. The wages of artisans, however, are relatively much higher—those of masons, | carpenters and smiths going up to seventy-five centsaday. And yet, with such miserable remuneration, workmen im those countries can attain a competency if they only defer marriage until they can have laid aside their savings for a few years; but the Asiatic Turk is proverbially improvident, and thinks nothing of spending in a nupiial celebration more than he can save in years, The condition of the laboring classes in European Turkey is less intolerable, but is still very bad. In the ancient and once flour- ishing province of Epirus city tradesmen earn from twenty-five to sixty-five centsaday. A characteristic feature of the country is, how- ever, that the men emigrate towards Constanti- nople or into the Danubian provinces in search ot work, so that the women form two-thirds of the population. In Albania, where the prin- ciples of the Vendetta flourish, the laborer works with his gun on bis back and pistols in his belt. All those Eastern countries suffer from the same causes—the exactions of the government in the way of taxes, for which it returns no equivalent in the shape of internal improvements, and the non-investment of capital in industrial enterprises, The next country in the industrial scale of prosperity is Russia. The great trouble there, however, is the vast number of holidays on which n0 work can be done. They number, including Sabbaths, 163 in the year, leaving only 202 for labor. And out of these must be deducted Mondays, which, for most workmen, are also holidays, as it is considered unlucky to commence work on that day, The lowest class of workmen earn from thirty to sixty cents per day, and on this they can support their families, because black bread and butchers’ meat are cheap. ll other com- modities, however, are dear in Russia. House rent is twice as dear as in England. One of the Consuls says that an English artisan would require to earn twice as much in Russia as he would in England in order to live as well. The next country on the scale of increasing Prosperity of the working classes is Germany. There the population is abundant and capital has been accumulating for many centuries. But even in Germany the condition of the laboring classes is not enviable, arising from two causes—namely, the sterility of the soil of Northern Germany, and the excess of popula- tion. Were it not for the safety valve of emi- gration German society would bea prey to the gravest disorders, Its industrial organi- zation continued to be, up to 1860, what it was in the Middle Ages. The tradesmen’s bunds, or guilds, possessed exclusive privileges, so that a tailor or shoomaker belonging to one petty principality could not set up his business in another. The breaking down of these bar- riers and the establishment of the freedom of industry have been of immense advantage in some provinces, particularly Silesia; wages have doubled in the last thirty years, while the cost of living has not increased in anything like the same proportion, In Saxony the farm laborer earns from twenty-five to thirty cents aday; the day laborer in towns from thirty to forty cents, and mechanics from fifty to sixty cents. Women earn from thirty to forty cents. These rates’are much higher than those of ten or fifteen years ago; but when they have to supply the wants of large fami- lies, as in most instances, they appear to be very insufficient. The Consuls in Ger- many and Russia agree in saying that it is a mistaken notion to suppose that the cost of living in those countries is less than it is in France or England. The only thing is that the habits of the people in Germany are much more simple and frugal than in England, where many thinga are re- garded as necessities which in Germany pass for sup?rfluities. Rent is particularly high. It is estimated that in Berlin at least sixteen per cent, and often twenty and thirty per cent, of the resources of a moderate family goes for house rent. So, generally, the family of a mechanic is crowded into one chamber, and mechanics without families are generally con- tent with a bed ina dormitory where there are five or six others. A budget of the esti- mated expenses of three types of family has been prepared by the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, at Borlin, which furnishes a good indication of the cost of living there. The first, belonging to the lower class, is supposed to have an income of from two hundred aad twenty to three hundred dollars. Of that twelve per cent goes for rent, sixty-two per cent for living, fifteen per cent for cléthing, five per cent for fuel and only one per cent for amusements and pleasures. The family of the second class is supposed to have an income of from four hundred and fifty to six hundred dollars. Of that fifty-five per cent goes for living, eighteen per cent for clothing, twelve per cent for rent and only one and one-half per cent for recreation, The family of the third class is supposed to have an income of seven hundred and fifty to twelve hundred dollars. Of this fifty per cent is assigned for cost of living, eighteen per cent for clothing, twelve per cent for rent and only three and one-half per cent for amusements. In these tables the statis- ticlan assigns no place to savings; but yet it appears that in Saxony the number of indigent persons diminished twenty per cent in the de- cade from 1855 to 1864. The condition of the laboring classes in Belgium, where there is great agricultural wealth and flourishing industry, is rather below the mark, if it is not even wretched. Various causes explain that phenomenon—first, the density of the population; second, the improvidence of the working classes, and third, the low standard of popular education, That is why, in that industrious country, nearly nine hundred thousand persons, or one- fifth of the population, are recipients of public charity. In the rural districts day laborers earn from thirty to forty-five cents a day, and women from sixteen to twenty cents, In manufactories common workmen are paid from thirty to fifty cents, superior hands sixty cents and women from twenty to fifty cents, In the coal mines wages vary from sixteen to forty cents a day for women and from eighteen to seventy cents for men. Mechanics, such as carpenters, masons, &c., earn from sixty to eighty cents. Those who earn from one to two dollars aday are the exception. A comparison betweea the wages of London and Antwerp has been made, from which it ap- pears that where a mason earns fifty cents a day io Antwerp he earns one dollar and forty- five cents in London, and the cost of living is abont equal in both cities. Consequently the artisan classes in Belgium enjoy but little of the comforts of the same classes In England, and still less of those which their fellow laborers in the United States enjoy. The condition of the workingmen of this country stands out, in this parliamentary re- port, in striking contrast to that of the work- ingmen in all the other countries embraced in its pages. It is unnecessary to repeat here the statistics of wages, cost of living, &c., given by the British consuls in their reports. One thing that comes in for severe criticism is the tendency of the federal and Siate legisla- tion to curry political favor with the working lasses by such measures as eight hour laws. Another subject of criticism is the pretension on the part of trade unions to dictate to their employers jn regard to apprentices, thus making trades the most exclusive and despotic of monopolies. The tendency of all these movements, we fear, is to give the alarm to capital and to cause its gradual withdrawal from industrial enterprises. If the rich manufacturer or mine owner finds that he is to be thwarted and interfered with in the management of his own business by trade unions, or that the return for his investment is to be diminished or imperilled by strikes and eight hour laws, he is very apt to with- draw bis capital from. such enterprises and invest it in government bonds or bank stock. There is great danger, therefore, of our work- ing classes, under their present impulses, re- peating the folly of killing the goose that lays the golden evga Fisk’s Love Letters, The earth will scarcely have settled over the grave of the assassinated Fisk before the long and troubled story of the besetting sin which tortured his life and brought about his death will be read by the public. The love letters to Josephine Mansfield which we pub- lish in this number of the HeRaxp are those against the publication of which Fisk fought in the courts as long as he had life. Read now, they will be pondered over as a painful pen _ picture of the man, taken by himself. In what they add to or take away from the opinion already formed of the unfortunate being snatched s0 suddenly from the life at times so bitter or so sweet to him will much depend on the point of view from which we read them. They can make him no worse in the eyes of those who gauge the enormity of guilt by the severe, immutable standard of the Decalogue; but it will be discovered that, if he invoked the vengeance of Heaven by his sinning, there was a symptom of strong affection in it, the shamefulness and social risk of which he knew, which, however, will find some pal- liation among the morbid sentimentalists of the modern school. These sad and silly let- ters ofa man hard and sharp in business, multifarious in designs and not over scrupu- lous or faithful in anything of civil life, ask a curious question in themselves—namely, to what corner of the brain has modern civilization relegated the region of romance? Last year Laura D. Fair shot down Judge Crittenden beside his wife and cbildren in San _ Francisco. In the trial which followed, long, fervid letters were read, wherein that old man of the world poured forth an avalanche of endearment on the unclean woman who slew him in the end. The parallel between the two cases is not so far astray. It was not the woman herself who killed Fisk, but the rival—who shall not say, goaded by the woman? We can look back over centuries and find that love letters, the outpourings of two understanding souls, have been famous since the art of writing was invented, Away in the twelfth century, through mediwval dust and darkness, the names of Abelard and Heloise stand out from the semi-gloom around them, Abelard, the wondrous logician, the powerful instructor, the deeply learned, whose theses and declarations of faith thundered up to the very gates of all-powerful Rome, whose pupils were numbered by thousands, and the light of whose genius out- shone all others of the time, is better remem- bered to-day through the pages of his love letters than the ponderous Latin tomes of bis logic. Men busy in the world, plotting, not the ruling of stocks and shareholders, but the empire of the earth, with its people for their slaves, have turned in the midst of all their struggles, violence and intrigue to talk ‘‘sweet nothings” with women, those women, too, not their wives. It is eighteen hundred years and more since the sensual, cruel, ambitious Marc Antony first saw the gorgeous galley of the Egyptian Queen floating on the waters of the Cydnus and became her slave. How he flung away his wife Octavia and with the insensate idolatry of a love-lorn fool surrendered to Cleo- patra his very soul! We can see him in all his Parthian wars turning to her through the blood and fight to pour his wild admiration in the ears of his serpent of Old Nile. We can picture him at Actium, sending his last words before the fight to her, and we can see the false-hearted creature, with a treachery which even vice abhors, play traitor to him in the end. Fisk was a vulgar Marc Antony; yet the same sensual madness which first led him from the path of conjugal fidelity hurled him in insane infatuation at the feet of the bad, and, what is ever worse, traitorous woman, who led him on only to cast him off for another. The end of Antony was tragic. Hedied by his own hand, The end of Fisk was tragic, too; the end was the same, but it was a rival who killed him. Nearer to our own day this cacoethes scribendi has exhibited itself in the fall of another great adventurer—the ex-Emperor of the French. It need only be named to be remembered that when the Man of Sedan laid down his ornamental sword, and when Rochefort and his sans culottes burst into the Tuileries, how they found among his papers stowed away in secret drawers the notes and endearments that told the tale of his liaison with the famous Marguerite Bellanger. Those who look over these letters of the murdered Prince of Erie will find nothing in them of the pure love immortalized in the sonnets of Petrarch to his Laura or the ideal tenderness of Dante for his Beatrice. It is Catullus as a stock jobber, Swineburne as an opéra bouffe director. From the fatal day when the meretricious beauty of Miss Mansfield burst upon him we have a whole year with a string of silly letters, neither polished in style, perfect in grammar nor brilliant in wit. We come to February, 1870, where it seems that a frost of jealousy is nipping the garish flower of his passion. He appeals to her ‘‘out of memory of the great love I have borne for you.” He speaks bitterly of bis own faults— “I have many, God knows; too many’— and his business habits hold his hands lest he should let the woman know too much of his passion, lest he should write too long an “advertisement” of his weakness, And he glides into an attempt at poetical feeling about Arabs, woodbine, heaven and the River Jordan, which we would fain smile at, if there were not so much blood upon the page. The intimacy cools, but not the hopeless passion against which he struggles. We find him tapping the telegraph to see what plote the woman is weaving against him. Ab! she is leaving him at last, it would seem; the shadow of the future assassin has fallen between them, and iu August we find him cynically hoping she will find she has ‘made no mistake.” Then the woman comes in with her accusing story, with a butcher's simile of ‘‘striking home and turning the knife round.” Fisk has complained of this to Stokes that he (Stokes) had cut his heart in two. The fall of the year marks the vintage of passion turned to vinegar in his soul, and we are surprised to hear him upbraiding in earnest galledness of spirit, and questioning thus :—‘‘But what think you of a woman who would veil my eyes by a gentle kiss, and afterward, night and day, for weeks, months and years, by deceit and fraud, to lead one through the dark valley of trouble, when she could have made my pathway one of roses?” Then follow such expreasions— which he felt, no doubt, and yet was sorry in the writing—as ‘‘devil incarnate,” and we can pity the wretch—for such he has now become— “laying at her feet a soul, a heart, a fortune and a reputation which had cost, by night and day, twenty-five years of struggle.” This is the one “black spot” upon a record which he vainly speaks of as ‘“‘brighter than ever seen on earth.” Remorse is creeping in, “its memory is indecent.” Mingling with our pity and loathing we trace something of grim, unconscious prophecy in the incoherent end- ing—‘“‘Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Amen!” It is the same misery over an ignoble object which awakened such strains as these in the poet Mangan— ‘The ido} I adored is broken, And I must weep its overthrow; Oh perfidy in friena or foe! In hua! Thou art the blaokest drop of woe’ That bubbies in the cup of lite. We follow on to see the man return help- lessly to his vomit, and become maudlin over the horrid thing ‘‘ when your better character comes in contact with mine.” The opéra bouffe manager breaks in like burlesque, and he tries to prove himself nothing but wheels and pulleys—‘‘surely the world is machinery; am I keeping up with it?” In spite of all he buries his anger in a shal- low show of generosity. At last the storm breaks. The assassin of the future would stab him through the very heart of his tender- ness in the courts. He would drag all these pitiful things out while the man lived that he might blast one once his friend, and they are surrendered only for money. How Fisk shuddered, bad as he was, when this was threatened, we can see in his moving the whole arcana of the law to arrest the hand of the profligate woman who would blazon her and his shame abroad. We will notice in the early halcyon days | of their wooing such glimpses of sahised workings betrayed as peep through an an- nouncement that Tweed is going to dine with them, and we think of the solitary mouiner at the funeral. We need not go further. The rest is written in blood, and with the doom of the law hanging over the prisoner at the Tombs we arrest our comment, But we can say that these inner pictures of a life remarkable for dramatic changes, startling and showy, if not picturesque, in- cident and tragedy in the end will be conned with absorbing interest by those who have watched the career of the actors. Bergh and the Pigeon Sbooters—The Monomanine Foiled. Notwithstanding all the threats of what he could and would do to prevent the pigeon shooting match at Jerome Park coming off Mr. Bergh has utterly failed to make them good. He received fair notice that the match would be shot, and it was. ‘True itis that his deputies were on hand, but they were powerless to enter upon private grounds. This they well understood, and they wisely refrained from exerting force when they knew that force would be used to repel any attempt to make an entrance. They requested admis- sion, but this was denied them, and they left, feeling that their errand had been as fruitless as it was supremely ridicu- lous. Mr. Bergh may have learned by this time that, no matter how much the public may approve of the principles upon which the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani- mals is founded, it will not countenance the invasion of private property in order to carry them out. Ifhe is not yet aware of this fact itis about time that he was made so, He has received his first lesson, which may be sufficient; if it is not he has only to attempt again to carry out his plans in order to have them as completely frustrated as they were on Friday last. He claims a power superior to that of the Emperor of Rassia or Queen of England. He seeks to trample upon the sacred rights of the people. He endeavors to exert an authority that is inadmissible, and, by striving to do too much, is rapidly destroy- ing all the good done by the society that is un- fortunate enough to have him for its President. If all of Mr. Bergh’s claims were allowed, if all he demands were conceded, where would the end be? At what point would he stop? He and his agents have already in many cases overstepped the bounds of prudence and of politeness; they have even gone so far as to insult not only men, but ladies, They have stopped upon the slightest pre- text—indeed, upon no pretext whatever— private carriages; in fact, their insolence has been carried beyond endurance, and the time has come when it must be ended. If allowed to proceed further he will endeavor to invade the privacy of one’s dwelling, should he by any possibility hear that a dog ora cat was being maltreated therein. Every door will have to fly open at his bidding, and no place will be secure from the visits of bim- self or his satellites. Tais thing cannot be. In no country but this would he have been permitted to go as far as he has, and even here the people are beginning to tire of it, and are really questioning his entire sanity. They consider him a monomaniac, and although desiring to deal charitably with his weakness, they will demand that a check be put upon it. He is fast making a society that should be most useful comparatively valueless, and if he is allowed to go on in his Don Quixote style he will entirely destroy it. For the sake of preserving it, for the sake of having animals humanely treated, for the sake of carrying out all the good purposes for which the society was organized, let us have another head to it. Let us have a President who will not bring it into ridicule, who is not half crazy upon the subject of pigeon shooting and other so-called cruelty; let power be taken entirely out of his hands, and placed in those of one who will use it with discretion. Why would it not be best to place the duty of preventing cruelty to animals entirely in the hands of the police, and hold that body responsible? It certainly seems the most proper plan. If this system were once inau- gurated the chances are that the wishes and purposes of the society would best be carried out, Atall events, it would prevent troubles and annoyances that are fast becoming seri- ous—that are rapidly assuming the proportions of a public nuisance, The probabilities are thet Mr. Bergh has reached the end of his tether; that be has seen how absurd the Mr. whole of his late conduct has been; that, if his senses have not entirely left him, he will in future keep within the bounds of prudence and not go plunging blindly after every case that he in his half madness considers cruelty to animale. The experiencehe has lately had may be the means of checking him in his headlong course, and reatore him to his normal condition. If it does we may congratulate the society that at present acknowledges him as its President, for then he will be able to serve its interests properly. We may congratulate the public also, for then it will be free from his annoy- ances and absurdities, and, indeed, we may congratulate the animals too, for they will be better looked after by an entirely sane man than by a President who is doing his best to injure their cause, We anxiously wait to see what is tobe the result, and to learn if Mr. Bergh has determined that discretion is the better part of valor. ie Review of the Religious Prese—Their Opinions ef the Latest Grand Sensation. Our promment religious contemporaries this week make the Stokes-Fisk tragedy the text for solemn homilies on the sinfulness of the world and the temptations that are likely to beset the path of the greedy seeker after worldly riches. It{s a notable fact that but little sympathy is expressed for the deceased millionnaire, while his moral, religious and financial careers are dwelt upon with a vividness that could scarcely be expected from any other source than the columns of prejudiced sectarian papers. The fact that Fisk was never cele- brated for his donations to religious subjects of charity, no matter how bountiful he may have been in the general run of benevolence and charitable deeds, may in some measure account for this severity of the religious press upon the character of the deceased. But it may not be exactly fair to ascribe these attacks: to uncharitable motives; but in con- ceding the soundness of th proverb _ that SGharity covers a mullifade of sine,” we think the nines pay might have been a little more lenient with the memory of one who was recently familiarly known among us as “Jim Fisk.” The Presbyterian Hoangelist has this to say about Fisk :— He was a bold, bad man, whose very success made him most dangerous to those around him, and espe- ctally to young men, who envied bis fortune and were Jed away by hisevilexample. And what shocked the community perhaps even more than his unscrapu- lousness in getting money was the way in which he flaunted it betore the public eye. A man of low education, he had @ coarse, barbaric taste for vul- ‘ar display. But worse than this tawdry show waa he gross immorality of his life, which he took no pains to conceal. Not content with showing off his il-gotten wealth, he flaunted his vices in the face of the community with an wtter contempt for pub- Mc opinion, and it is a remarkable instance of retribution that ne came to his end {from the rival- ries and jealousies of his dissolute compantons. The Independent, in a leading editorial article headed ‘‘A Fit End,” says :— ‘he man who was assassinated last Saturday’ . afternoon has often enough been called a eae and oiten enough athiel. He was both of these, and he was a greatdeal more, He was one of the ablest as well a8 one of the drollest and one of the worat men in the country. * * '* The man was good enough, as the world goes, except in two somewhat important particulars; he ‘Was @ robber and he was a libertine, He nad plenty of ed and moral courage. He was generous and Kindly, He was no drunkard, He was no hypocrite. He has been called a buffoon; but the Jovial faculty which delights a company with merry quips and tales bas been highly valued in eminent statesmen divines, Abraham Lincoln was often charged With buffoonery, and we remember Dr, Bethune, and we recall that the most brilliant punster in the couutry is a University chancellor, After thus making a trio of Abraham Lin- coln, Dr. Bethune and James Fisk, Jr., the Independent continues :— Every man’s tirst thought on hearing of his assas sination was, What a pity ne should have died ag he has! How often has it been said, Jim Fisk never will aie rich! Divine Providence must make anexample of him. We had ali hoped that he might be tripped up at last by the law, have his wealth stripped from him, and thus suffer the penalty of his crimes, But a second thought tells ‘us that it 1s as well that his licentiousness should bring his jf etttgt as his dishonesty. The public needs this lesson quite as much as the other. Property will find means to protect itself. Kobvery isa very tangible crime and can be more easily punished. But the public virtue is comparatively undefended. Lust is the deadliest canker of society and the nardest to correct. In days, when on the public stage a shameless woman dares to |e the doctrine that she nas the right to change er partner every day if she pleases, we are not sorry to see the doctrine thus reddened with blood. This is slashing with a two-edged sword, but it is the character of the Independent to hit right and left, taking good care it does not hit itself. The Christian Union—Henry Ward Beecher—pronounces as follows :— Fisk's career has been in ail respects disastrous to the community. His enormous dishonesties have wrought mischief that cannot be calculated. The corruption of the Bench by him and bis associates has been perhaps the worst political evil of the time. ‘The man was no worse personally than many others; and we doubt not that he had some good qualities. But the effect of his example has been fearful. He has been a conspicuous example of worldly success gained through Cholera ana for corrupt pleasure. His gorgeous displays of wealth, his open dissoluteness, the coarse fame that attacned to nim, have doubtiess allured a host of the young intosin. His show of recklessness and joviality, and the sort of toleration which amusement at his freaks won for him, lentagilding wo his worse traits that made their influence more pernicious. But notwithstanding this opinion of the character of the murdered man, the Christian Union holds that ‘“‘the assassin should be brought to trial at the earliest possible moment and the law take its full course. It would be & most dangerous precedent that such a mur- der should be palliated by the bad character of the victim. There needs but this element of lawless violence, added to dishonesty and sensuality, to make the social structure com pletely rotten.” The Golden Age—Theodore Tilton—ex- presses the following opinion of Fisk :— There was scarcely a respectable man in this city who Would invite Fisk to bis house, and no woman who cared for her reputation would visit his opera box or ride im his carriage. His life was essen- ually vulgar, and it 1s oe of the fine revenges sof the integrities that he insulted and the decen that he trampled under foot that nis passion for a harlot cost him his life. There were kindnesses m him. He was capable of generosity. He per- formed many good deeds that will be gratefully re- membered. He possessed an energy and executive ability of the rarest order. his other quali been balanced by a sound and well-trainea con- science and disciplined by education he heyy nave achieved almost any eminence. But these fatal de- fects made him @ mero vulgar adventurer, most despised when most suc cess |, and his influence acurse and his name # byword. Like the Christian Union, the Golden Age denounces the crime of Fisk’s assassination, saying that Fisk ‘‘was monster was no rea- son why Stokes should act as his executioner. And the murderer gets no sympathy even though his victim is uawept.” The Liberal Christian shows the spirit of a liberal Christian by saying of Fisk :— audacity and sensationalism ag & speculal whnom principle or shame, & roud, & cori mismanager, an over-dressed haditué of the park fud streets, with bis perpetual iawsuits in the in- terest or defence of his robberies and vices, have kept him conspicuously tor four ears before the public, @ standing jest and a perpetual model of successful folly ana crime. * * * He has corrapted more men and women by his briliant success in business and in pleasure than any man of his age and time. Ne was @ profligate of the first water, and maue hi rofligacy fascinating and contagious by his reck- (ess generosity in Ninging other peopie’s money Into every lap that invited his lascivious cye or every pocket that favtered his vanity and love of Pom ut bad ag Fisk was, the Lidoral Christian