The New York Herald Newspaper, June 5, 1874, Page 6

NEW YORK HERALD, FRIDAY, JUNE 5, 1874.—TRIPLE SHEKT. ‘EW YORK HERALD BROADWAY AND ANN STREET. JAMES GORDON BENNETT, PROPRIETOR. THE DAILY HERALD, pudlished every day in the vear. Four cents per copy. Annual subscription Price $12. All business or news letters and telegraphic \Gespatches must be addressed New Yore Genar. Rejected comuiunications will not be re- ‘turned. Letters and packages should be prop- erly sealed. +. LONDON OFFICE OF THE NEW YORK | HERALD—NO. 46 FLEET STREET. Subscriptions and Advertisements will be received and forwarded on the same terms as in New York. ‘ Volume XXXIEX..... 0.2... ceeeee ee AMUSEMENTS THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING | WALLACK’S THEATRE, Broadway and Thirteenth stree.—FATE, at 8 P. M.; closes at LL P.M. Miss Carlotta Le Clercq. OLYMPIC THEATRE, Broadway, between Houston and Bleecker streets. — | VARIKVY' ENTERTAINMENT, at M.; closes at 10:45 P.M. TMd P. WOOD'S MUSEUM, Broadway, corner of Thirtieth street—OHRIS AND LENA, at 2P. M.: closes at 430 P.M. Same at8P. M; closes at 10:80 P, M. Baker and Farron. NIBLO'S THEATRE, Broadway, between Prince and Houston streets —THE | LADY OF THE LAKE, - M.; closes at lu5 P.M. | Mr. Joseph Wheelock and Miss lone Burke. | | NEW PARK THEATRE, BROOKLYN, the City Hall.—Transatlantic loses at 10:30 P. M. Fulton street, opposite sovelty Company, at P. TERRACE GARDEN THEATRE, The Sew Reciprocity Negotiations. The Huraup published yesterday a very full account of the history and statistics of this important subject and a statement of the leading features of the proposed new treaty. We do not see from what quarter any opposition is to come, unless it be from the extreme, bigoted protectionists, who object to every approach towards free trade. On Wednesday Mr. Kelley, of Penn- sylvania, a type of these ultras, disclosed his hostility by offering in the House a reso- lution which was a virtual denial of the authority ot the treaty making power to nezo- tiate a reciprocity arrangement, on the ground that the constitution clothes Congress with exclusive authority over all subjects con- nected with imposts and revenue, It is creditable to the good sense of the House that it promptly rejected Mr. Kelley's resolution. So far as the point he tried to make is in- volved the new treaty will undoubtedly fol- | low the precedent of the Reciprocity Treaty of | 1854, which contained this language: —‘‘The present treaty shall take effect as soon as the laws required to carry it into operation shall have been passed by the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain, and by the Provincial Parlia- ments of those of the British North American colonies which are affected by this treaty on the one hand, and by the Congress of the United States on the other.’’ If all legisla- tive rights are thus respected in the new treaty, as of course they will be, Mr. Kelley's constitutional cavil will not have an inch of ground to stand upon. His real objection is to the surrender of any part of our obstructive tariff It Mr. Kelley were wiser and more consider- ate he would perceive that, even from the | point of view of an enlightened protectionist, @ new reciprocity treaty is desirable. The only intelligible purpose of protection is to Filly-eighth street, near Third avenue.—KiNE LEICHTE | Pans, ats P. M.; closes at W eM. | | CONWAY'S BROOKLYN THEATRE, treet, Brookiyn.—!H& STRANGER, and | MOON. Begins at $ P.M. ; closes at 10 45 P, uway’s Beneilt, | | ATRE COMIQUE, | N HAND, and VARIETY ENTER. | jeloses at 10:30 P.M. ‘x0. 14 Broadway. MLAINMENT, at 8 P. | TONY PASTOR'S OVERA HOUSE, Wowery.—JACK HARKAWAY AMONG THE BRI. | fees at 5 P.M; closes at 10:30 P.M. Matinee at2 \ BRYANTS OPERA HOUSE, nay street, near Sixt! avenue.—NEGRO MIN: | Y, &c., at 5 P.M. ; closes at Wx, M. ater CENTRAL PARK GARDEN, Tifv-ninth street and Sixth avenue.—iHOMAS’ CON. PULL, at 8 P. M. ; closes at 10 30 P. M. COLORSEUM, | Proadway, corner of Thirty-fifth ‘street.—-LONDON BY NIGHT, at'L P.M; closes at 5 P.M. Same at7P. M closes at 10 P. M. ROMAN HIPPODROME, Madison avenue and Twenty-sixth stree.—GRAND 7 AUEANT—CONGRESS OF NATIONS, at 1:30 P. M. and 7PM. ‘TRIPLE SHEE New York, 3 Friday, June 5, 1874. = From our reports this morning the probabilities | sare that the weather to-day will be partly cloudy | ‘and warmer. Wat, Sruget Yesrerpay.—Stocks were | heavy and generally lower. Gold opened and closed at 111}, after selling down to 1114. Tue West Porst Examtnations have not | ‘been so attractive this year as usual, because the weather has kept the pretty girls away. Mayor Havewever has refused to suspend, | remove or investigate the Police Commission- ers as the Board of Aldermen have requested. Who would have thought it? Boston Wants a Rarroap to the Hudson | River through the Hoosac Tunnel. Boston has therefore resolved that it wants such a road and resolved to resolve to build it, All this is very touching. Tae Nattonan Quarantine Brut passed the House yesterday, with an amendment to the effect that nothing in the bill should apply to State or municipal laws. As Congress will | probably prefer that each State shall pay the expenses of quarantine at its own ports, this | may have the effect of making the act practi- | cally inoperative against better systems than any national board can establish. Tae Coopens’ Sree in Brooklyn has been | the incidental cause of the shooting and prob- | able death of a society man, named Cunning- ham, the shot being fired by Peter Smith, a non-society man. Smith was persecuted and very badly used by Cunningham and other persons previous to the shooting. Whether this extreme course was in self-defence will be & question for a jury to determine ; but even though such was not the case the actions of the strikers cannot fail to bring their society | into great disrepute. | Tue Transportation Resouvtion was dis- cussed in the Senate yesterday, Mr. Freling- hbuysen and Mr. Windom being the principal speakers in its favor, and Mr. Bayard, Mr. Hamilton and others opposing it. The ques- tion of national aid to public improvements, after the discussions of the earlier days of the Republic and the disastrous consequences of land grants and other aids to railroads in more recent years, is no longer a proper subject for legislation. The country will never sanction any more schemes of this kind, however plaus- ibly they may be urged. Tue Apvocares or TzMPERANCE are some- times absurd, and the Orthodox Quakers seem the most absurd of temperance advocates. ‘They regard cider as ‘‘a stumbling block,’ and trace much drunkenness to pies and pud- | dings. The pies are probably unwholesome, | but we doubt whether they were ever the cause of filling drunkards’ graves, Temperance re- form is too important to be brought into dis- repute by such feeble twaddle, The Orthodox Friends had better work more earnestly and talk less. | Arp ror THE Surrerrns in Louisiana must continue to flow into that State or there will | be famine as well as misery and wretched. | noss. As bearing upon this question we print | the substamee of an interview with Dr. ‘Thomas Cottman, who has just returned from | the inundated districts. Dr. Cottman declares | that he does not know which is worst—the overflow of the Mississippi or the misrule of ‘he politicians. Unless Congress brings order « at of chaos the anarchy will continue, but a | serous people can do much to relieve the | has arisen lest the country should be parched | svllorings of these poor wretches, We have furnish markets and secure remunerative prices to producers. But no class of prod- ucers in the United States would lose a | market by free exchange of agricultural pro- ducts with Canada. The large importation of domestic animals into the United States from Canada in the last year of the former treaty is calculated to make an erroneous impression in this respect unless the circumstances be duly weighed. The ordinary tendency is quite the other way, for reasons as irreversible as the laws of ¢limate. Tho natural cost of rear- ing animals in Canada is altogether greater than it is in this country. Canada has short summers and long winters. Cattle crop their own food in the pastures fora much smaller ‘ | portion of the year than in most of our States. A great part of the labor of the husbandman is expended in laying in a store of hay and other fodder for his domestic animals during the severe protracted winters. For this reason the natural price of cattle in Canada must al- ways be higher on the average than on this side of the frontier, and it is only under very exceptional circumstances that they can be brought south of the lakes without a loss. In 1865 there was a great and altogether ex- | ceptional dearth of horses and cattle in the United States, owing to the enormous con sumption entailed by the war. Both in the North and the South horses and beeves had been drawn into the vortex of military waste for four years, and animals had been destroyed so much more rapidly than they could be bred that Canada became a source of supply for partially filling the vacuum. But, gener- | ally, we shall be large exporters of animals and animal products to the Dominion, and reciprocity will reopen a valuable market. to our farmers. Most parts of Canada are too cold for Indian corn to do well. Her sum- mers are so short and the autumn frosts come so early that only a stunted kind of maize, of quick growth, which gives but a small yield to the acre, is planted by the Canadian farm- ers. They accordingly lack our boundless eheap resources for fattening swine, and under a new reciprocity treaty Canada will again become a large importer of Ameri- can pork. We shall supply a great part of the food consumed by the Canadian lumber- men and by the fishermen of the Eastern Provinces. Now, as the main argument for protecting American manufactures is the steady market protection affords to American agricul- ture, the protectionists are bound in con- sistency to support the new Reciprocity Treaty | instead of opposing it. The Canadian mar- | ket is close by our doors, and satisfies the demand of the protectionisis for a market near enough to the producer to save the sacri- fice of a great part of the crop in transporta- tion. The two principal articles which would be imported from Canada under a reciprocity | treaty are wheat and lumber. The American farmer would be benefited by one and not injured by the other. Even if the free im- portation of Canadian wheat were objection- able tothe wheat growing West, it would be more than compensated by free lumber. The great wheat region of our country is either bare prairie or scantily timbered, and nearly all the lumber for fences and buildings has to be brought from a great distance. As lumber will be cheapened throughout the West by the removal of the duty some lowering of the price of wheat might be accepted for the sake ot this advantage. But the free introduction of Canadian wheat cannot affect the price of American wheat at all. Since the repeal of the English Corn laws the price of American | and of Canadian wheat has been alike deter- mined by the Liverpool market, uniformly rising and falling on both sides of the St. Lawrence in sensitive response to the English quotations. Our farmers will neither lose nor gain a cent on a thousand bushels of wheat by | the Reciprocity Treaty, except indirectly. They will be encouraged to grow more Indian corn and to raise and fatten more swine and cattle by free access to the Canadian market; and so far as this diminishes the quantity of wheat produced it may tend to enbance the price, since the Liverpool market depends upon the general supply in all the countries trom which England makes importations. As to lumber, the price would, no doubt, be reduced, but this would benefit the whole community, including even the owners of American timbePJands. The demand for Yumber has of late years so far outstripped the | supply that our forests are being rapidly de- nuded of their trees, and a widespread alarm | by prolonged summer droughts. Men of encouraging the growth and preventing the destruction of trees. The Reciprocity Treaty will contribute more to this end than all pos- sible laws. It will diminish the temptation to the short-sighted, ill-judged action of owners in cutting down trees at a rate with which new growths cannot keep pace. The Canadian proposition for reciprocity in the coasting trade has been wisely rejected, at least for the present. Unless we are ready to give up our domestic shipping as we have lost our foreign we cannot permit Canadian ves- | sels to ply between our ports. They are built at so much less expense than ours that their competition would drive our ships out of our own coasting trade, and we should be com- pletely prostrated as a maritime Power, even in our own waters. Surely this is no time to surrender that monopoly of the coasting trade which has been maintained without any relaxation ever since the organization of the government. After having descended from our former high rank in international com- merce it is doubly necessary to preserve the | nursery for seamen and shipbuilders afforded by the coasting trade, into which we have never permitted the intrusion of foreigners. Genteel Blackmailing. A few days since a committee of Southern citizens, anxious to raise a fund to relieve the sufferers on the Lower Mississippi, addressed a letter to Mr. Edwin Booth, the tragedian, asking him to act for the benefit of the fund. Mr. Booth answered that he could not do so. He was a bankrupt, and he owed every hour of his tilfie to the retrieval of his fortunes. This reply seems to have excited angry comment in many journals. The Richmond Mnquirer, for in- stance, “cannot see how a man, who owes so much to the public, can thus coldly turn his back upon the demands of charity, no matter how needy he may be himself. ‘It is evi- dent,’’ continues the editor, ‘that Booth has not done himself any good by pursuing this course, for the world will hereafter remember that this great tragedian had not soul enough to devote one night’s services to suffering humanity, when the whole country was giving forth responsive echoes to the wants of the thousands of sufferers by the floods in the West."”” We think Mr. Booth made o proper and manly response. It was one of those cases in which it required more real courage to decline than to accept. But the attitude he assumed is proper one. There has been recently too much tendency towards genteel blackmailing of actors and singers and artiste in the name of charity. Mr. Booth, let us suppose, can earn a thousand dollars in one evening by playing “Hamlet.” This he does for “charity.” A citizen pays one dollar for a seat, enjoys the play, and feels that he has also done his share towards the ‘‘charity.” Now, we suppose this citizen to bea banker or a merchant. What would be his response if he were asked to give one day’s time and his pro- fits trom business for a ‘charity?’ He would say, ‘My business is business and charity is charity; I do business in my own way and I | give alms as I please.” This would, no doubt, | be the response of the editor of the Richmond | Enquirer if he were requested to give one day’s | issue of his paper to a charity. Mr. Booth is in the same position. His capital is his genius, and his time is given to the employ- ment of his genius. Were he as rich as Gar- | rick, and not, as we are sincercly sorry to know, unfortunate in his business affairs, this would still be his bonest position. Miss Cushman protested against this genteel blackmailing in a straightforward letter. Mr. Booth has done well to do the same thing. It is not fair to taunt either of these artists with “owing so much to the publie’’ and forgetting the debt. They owe the public nothing, but, on the contrary, the public owe them, as it does all artists of the same rank, abundant gratitude for the rich, overflowing endow- ments of their genius. Tue Boarp or Approrrionment met yester- day, and, on motion of Mr. Wheeler, resolved to print the revised estimates of the several departments of the city government before acting finally on the subject. The motion was carried by the votes of Mr. Vance and Mr. Wheeler, Comptroller Green voting against it. It is desirable that the new esti- mates should be published before the final amount of taxation is settled. The people desire to be assured that every possible redue- tion has been made and that the promise of a large saving of expense on the enactment of the city and county consolidation act is faith- fully carried out. The appropriation made in the last estimate to the Finance Department is one-third larger than any amount expended during single year under the old Tammany rule. It should now'be greatly reduced. The people also desire to ascertain the detailed ex- penditures of those departments which have hitherto been close corporations. Every un necessary expenditure ought to be avoided this year, so that we may have the more money for the prosecution of necessary works of public improvement, and the best way to secure a wise economy is to make public the revised estimates, as Messrs. Vance and Wheeler propose. | Banner utters 9 “warning Senator CARPENTER AND THE RarLEoaDA— Senator Carpenter. has taken sides with the people of Wisconsin in favor of what is known as the Potter Railroad bill. Strangely enough this is made an argument against his @e-elec- tion to the United States Senate, not because he is on the wrong side, but upon the assump- tion that he would have been on the wrong side if he had believed the wrong side would win. We should prefer to consider his re- election to the Senate upon higher grounds. than this—the grounds of fitness. It is so easy to impute bad motives that such imputa- tions have become the bane of American poli- tics. But itis clearly unfair to associate two distinct objects and treat them as one, Sena tor Carpenter's re-election is a question to be determined on its merits, and the railroad question is quite o different matter, to be settled in the interests of the people. By dragging purely personal or political con- siderations into the controversy the monop- olies are strengthened, while no good result is gained. Axorner Dam has burst, this one being in Maine. The country is full of feeble struc- tures of this kind, and no time is to be lost in y peatedly referred to the necessity of imme- | science tell us that forests produce rain as | making them secure. ‘The Mill River disaster cunte relief and again urge the duty upon the people of New Yorke | well as preserve the moisture of the soil, and legislative action is anxiously talked of for was a warning that must not be forgotten, or other calamities as terrible will follow it, Let Us Have Wisdom in the South. We took occasion, a few days since, to com- ment upon an article in the Raleigh (N. C.) Crescent, opposing what the editor called “negroism,”’ and to advise that journal and all who feel with it that ‘the contest in the South is not between races, but between hon- esty and dishonesty, between patriotism and crime.”” To this the Crescent answers that we misunderstood its meaning ; that it does not advise a war of races ; that it recognizes the political power of the negro; that North Carolina is in fine condition, ‘“blessed” with a good government, but that danger will come from the passage of the Civil Rights bill—the danger of “negroism,'’ or ‘“negroizing i the South ;” that the races will be contaminated, and the Southern Atlantic and Gulf States become the residence ‘of a mongrel popula- tion of about the stamina of the Mexican Peons.”’ “Would the Hzraxp,” asks the Crescent, ‘‘willingly see a race of American heroes and statesmen extinguished by amal- gamation with the African?’ Certainly not, we answer, nor do we have any such fear. We regard ‘‘negroism” or ‘‘negroizing the South” as a purely sentimental, impossible issue, like the celebrated question that used to haunt our earlier election canvasses as to whether republican candidates for Congress really rejoiced in the hope that their sisters would one day ‘marry a nigger.” All such controversy belongs to the ribaldry and bad- inage of the canvass, and has no place in se- rious, calm discussion of public affairs. We are profoundly convinced that if any- thing could make the defeat of the Civil Rights bill impossible it would be the tone of many of the Southern journals in discussing it. The Shelbyville Commercial assures us that “the passage of the Civil Rights bill means centralization or revolution. One or the other will follow.’’ The Macon Telegraph informs us “that some men in the South, wearied of the fight for order and honest; intelligent government with the dominant black legions of radicalism, had rather take the chances ot absolutism and one-man power than continue the struggle.’ The Nashville Republican ery,”” that “the enactment of this Civil Rights bili portends the gravest conseqiences in the way of engendering bad blood and inciting to a war of races.” We have appeals to that “instinct which ferbids whites to mingle with the blacks on terms of in- timacy,” for “those whom God has patied asunder let no man join together.’ ‘fhe sooner,”’ says the Charleston News, ‘the mad- ness of party fanaticism drives the white race to the wall the sooner will the freedman find his natural level, above which the necessities and ambition of unscrupulous demagogues have temporarily raised him.’’ This, as we have said, is unwise, and belongs to the ribaldry and passion of controversy. It can only result in arraying one race against the other in the South. Nothing is clearer than that no law can be made to compel whites and blacks to “amalgamate” unless they choose so to do, just as no law can pre- vent them if they are so disposed. The whole question is not one of law, but of taste and custom. The men of both races have a common interest in honest government, and it should be the aim of white men in the South toappeal to the negro’s patriotism and prideto assist in the work of reform, and not to drive him, from an instinct of fearor self-preserva- tion, to make an alliance with the ‘‘carpet- baggers’’ and adventurers, who hold power over the whites only by the help of the blacks. For it is natural aud not surprising that the blacks should prefer the thief who treats them with friendship to the hon ‘hite man who regards them as an inferior, degraded and usurping race, Above all, and here is the ground that should never be forgotten in this discussion, and especially by prudent men in the South who wish to defeat the Civil Rights bill and other attempts at extravagant and impossible legislation—there are two races in these United States, North and South, though mainly in. the South, and here they must re- main. We cannot exterminate the African as we are exterminating the Indian. We must accept him as entitled to the earth, the air and the sunshine; to freedom and the right to pursue his happiness. What the South wants is peace between the races, and not war. For that reason we wel- come any sign.of regeneration in its politics, not only among republicans, but democrats, Here, for instance, is an appeal to the republi- cans of Alabama from the Daily State Journal, which, if only sincere, has a pleasant sound. The republicans of Alabama, this journal says, “geek to restore the credit of the State so seriously beclouded under democratic rule,” “to restore a balance to the Treasury,’’ to lift the State ‘out of the slough of despond into which democracy has plunged it."’ If the republicans in Alabama are in earnest in these assurances they can do a blessed work. It will be the first Southern State in which they have done anything but legislate upon recog- nized principles of highway robbery. South Carolina and Louisiana are sad trophies of this republican supremacy, and if that party in Alabama will really reform itself and insure good government it will be the beginning of reconstruction. More than this, what we want in the South is the awakening of a generous, manly, self- asserting patriotism among the Southern people themselves—a new manifestation of those qualities of endurance and fortitude which gave the Confederacy a renown that will last through ages. We cannot feel that all these noble qualities—the statesmanship, the self-denial, the perseyerance which marked the Confederate course during the war—were surrendered at Appomattox with the armies of General Lec. And yet we sometimes fear such was really the case, especially when we see all that is left of the manhood of that puissant Confederacy is some poor foolish gasconading Bob Toombs or Ben Hill; when we read in the columns of the journals these frenzies about another revolution; when we hear statesmen ond thinkers crying like chil- dren over some fancied “‘negroizing’’ of the South or in dread that they may become a mongrel population, like the ‘“Peons of Mexico.” This is unworthy and should alto- gether be avoided. Let political wisdom rule the South, and it will be answered by a spirit of fraternity in the North that will enable these sadly oppressed people to regain their former splendor and prosperity. But the way to gain this is by peace and not by wart The Public Schools of St. Louis. The public schools of St. Louis seem to be far in advance ot those of any city in the United States. Not only do they afford a good rudimentary and English education, but theyembrace all the topics of special study required by recent scientific discovery and the growth of general culture. Theyare far ahead of our own schools, because their facilities for teaching German, French and music are ample. These languages are necessary tc modern civilization, and music is an accom- plishment required by modern culture. It is certainly a very severe reproof to us that they are taught so successfully in St. Louis. It is true that in New’ York some faint attempts are made at this kind of instruction, but they have resulted in little good, because there has been no comprehensive system of study ap- Plicable to all schools of equal grade and com- pulsory upon the pupils as a recognized branch of the public school curriculum. If our sys- tem were as complete as that of St, Louis—a city which spends ten thousand dollars ® year for musical instruction alone— we might expect like results. But St. Louis even goes further, and besides teaching what most of our American colleges do not teach—music, modern languages and natural science—it includes the classics and the higher mathematics in its public school course. Nothing more thorough has ever been accomplished in the way of general edu- cation, and no unstinted praise is die to this model city of the West. The question natu- rally suggests itself, Why is it that 8} Louis so far excels the larger and wealthier cities of the East in public education? Mr. Joshua Cheever, the President of the Board of Public Schools, tells ys that the growth of the schools has been mostly due to their popularity with all classes of citizens, owing to the entire exclusion of all partisan and sectarian ques- tions from their management. But this only partially answers the question. It is impossi- ble that a school system which has been established only thirty-seven years should attain such popularity merely because politi- cal and sectarian questions have never entered into their management. 4 Evidently there has been rare wisdom and liberality in the system of public instruction adopted by the School Board of St. Louis, and we commend the study of their annual reports to our own Board ot Education. Yesrerpay 4 Numpze of minor suits for salary and wages, withheld by Comptroller Green from city employés on frivolous grounds, were decided against the munici- pality. Among them was the claim of a poor scrub woman in the County Court House, who has been kept out of the money due to her for services since 1871. In the case of a clerk in one of the departments a witness testified that he had followed the plaintiff asa spy on his movements for some weeks. It would be well to ascertain whether this amateur detec- tive’s expenses were paid out of the city gov- ernment, Of course these suits all imposed costs and interest on the city treasury unneces- sarily. The Comptroller last year audited and paid the bill of a lobby counsel employed by him at Albany, although the charge of one hundred dollars per day fee and extra hotel expenses was made for days on which the Legislature was not in session. Yet he re- fuses to pay clerks and scrub women on the plea that the services for which they claim compensation were not fully performed, and thus fastens the expense of useless litigation on the city. Monzy Anunpant in Enotanp.—The un- erring indicator of the state of the money market in England is the rate of discount at the Bank of England. We learn by telegram that the rate fixed at a meeting of the directors | yesterday was three per cent. The rate for money at the Steck Exchange on government securities was two and a half. This shows that there is an abundance of money and that | there is no drain of specie worth speaking about for foreign countries. The vast accu- mulation of capital and the favorable state of exchange in England result chiefly from the ability and prudent foresight of her statesmen and capitalists. Financial matters are man- aged well there and always with a single eye to British interests. With us, on the contrary, there is a lamentable want of statesmanship and foresight, and everything is conducted in a slipshod manner. Tue Boarp or AupmrMen yesterday, on motion of Alderman Flanagan, instructed the Commissioners of Accounts to institute an immediate examination into the affaira of the Department of Charities and Correction, and to report to the Board. The Commissioners should ascertain how the census of the popu- lation of the institutions is kept, for there is reason to suspect that children and others are counted twice over, and that names are kept on the list after the persons bearing them have left the institutions. Let us hope that the Commissioners will do their duty in the matter, and neither delay a report, as they have delayed the statement of the city’s floating debt, nor ‘‘doctor” it after it has been made at the instance of any official. The-people desire « full exposure of the affairs. of this important department, and as they never can expect an investigation at the hands of the Mayor they can only look for it from the Commissioners of Accounts or-in a court. of criminal jurit Cnemarion.—The discussion on cremation seems to be something more than a fantastic controversy about a subject that would never pass beyond the cdémic newspapers and scien- tific journals. It seems that “The Crema- tion and Urn Society, Limited,” has been registered in London, with a proposed capital of a quarter of a million of dollars to carry out the necessary arrangements in connection with the process of cromation. There is some comfort in knowing that the company is “limited.’’ Henesy.—The Swing heresy case in Chicago has come to.an end by the retirement of Pro- fessor Swing from the Presbyterian Church. There was a long trial, much discussion and many scandals. In emulation of Professor Swing we learn that a Catholic priest named Terry also committed heresy in a lecture on the poetry of Genesis. It seems that this divine took the ground that the stories about the Garden of Eden and man’s creation are simply poems. Chicago was happy in the prospect of another trial for heresy, but the Catholic Church, it seems, does things in a more summary manner. The Bishop sent the a ie nd a alae West Point and Annapolis, In the schools at which the nation provides for the education of officers for the two branches of its armed service the people have always taken o peculiar and almost romantic interest, and this interest our late history has tended to intensify. Whatever fancies may be indulged by those who propose to cut the army down to a shadow and to erase the navy from the national accounts, it will always be admitted by men of common sense that the need for national defence is never so remote that a well administered government can afford to leave it out of practical considera- tion; and it has always been acknowledged by writers on the theory and the practice of war that in the emergencies which suddenly im- peril a nation’s safety instructed officers are, of all other things required, the most difficult to secure. Soldiers, better or worse, may be found at any time ‘in any country, and, as our own history has shown, so short a military training as three months will make them hold together in battle with respectable tenacity. Foundries, factories and commerce will supply with comparatively little delay all else that is needed to make an army. But, with all the material thus supplied, the one want of officers capable of turning the material into an effec tive force and of directing it against the enemy when it is dreated can neither bp bought in the market nor made in a hurry; and nations that have tried to wage war without instructed officers, or that have secured them in prossing need, from foreign countries, have uniformly found defeat and victory equally disastrous. One of the happy successes of William ITL of England was due to the device with which he had acted upon his recognition of this difference in the facility with which every other part of an army may be supplied by comparison with good officers. Parlia- ment, apprehensive of the uses that a foreign king might make of the very effective army that had overcome the resistance of the adherents of James IL, enacted its reduction toa figure that was deemed safe, even in the face of the fact that renewed war was immi- nent; but the King obeyed the law and kept himself prepared for possibilities also. He did not dismiss an officer, and scarcely kept a private soldier, His muster roll of generals, colonels, captains and lieutenants was just about equal to the army Parliament had provided for, and he kept all these, sure that private woldlecs would never be difficult to find if war should come. It is much in the vein of the King’s fancy that we should treasure West Point and Annapolis, They are our cheap and com- paratively safe army and navy. As it has always been our policy to keep an established military force at the lowest possible limit in numbers and expenditure, and as it is now a mania with some mole-eyed and bilious economists to carry this proper policy to ridiculous lengths, we can never have, and should never expect to have, on hand a military force fit to meet any important danger that may suddenly arise, and our best provision for such a danger must necessarily be the fact that we shall always have in the country some thousands of the men graduated from our great military academy—men soundly taught in the principles of military science and fitted tothe service of creating armies from the abundant material which the country can always supply. If we were situated with regard to our neighbors as the various countries of Europe are this would be an inadequate provision. France, Ger- many, Italy, Austria and Russia are com- pelled to support respectively great armies, because any one might be overrun by the armies of a neighbor before it could levy and train an army for its own defence. But we have no military neighbors, and since the developments of our war the attempt will never be made to reach us from Europe. In American wars the great endeavor will always be to get the first effective army into the field, end the success in this endeavor will be | gained by the people whose military acad- emies have done the most effective service in supplying capable graduates. It is true that in our late war this was almost as much against us as for us. West Point made better soldiers than patriots in many cases; but there is no apparent likelihood that we shall have a repetition of that experience, and it is but just to acknowledge that though West Point harmed us a great deal we cannot say where we should be to-day but for what it did. It brought us through. It won for us finally, and that is.the practical point, and it will probably win for us again; and the Acad- emy should receive the attention and support of Congress just in proportion as the mania for cutting down the army prevails. It should become the understood theory of the Acad- emy’s existence that it does not merely edu- cate officers for actual and immediate appoint- ment to posts in the army, but that it gives. a military education on the implied pledge that service shall be rendered whenever in the future it may be required for a national | emergency. In the case of naval instruction we have seen in actual application in the past the ex- act theory indicated. In our first maritime war, though we had never had a naval acad- emy, we found ready made to our hands in the commercial marine of the country abundance of good officers, for the commercial marine was in those days near enough to the charac- ter of a navy to train men for the service. But progress in war-making has made the supply no longer reliable. It need never be apprehended, however, that we shall have to regard Annapolis merely as we have above contemplated West Point; for we shall never be without a navy more or less effective, ac- cording to the brains that may control in the Navy Department. Our people have not yet. altogether parted with their wits; and, al- though a clamor is from time to time heard to cut down and extinguish the navy in the name of economy, we are disposed to believe that the country will in the final effort require that the economy shall be applied to the pilterings and perquisites of Congressmen and other official jobbers, and not toa branch of the ser- vice essential to a people who cannot always be kept from asserting their legitimate auperi- ority on the ocean. Tue Potrce Justices are beginning to in- quire why it is that prisoners committed to the Island are arraigned before them a second time long before their terms of imprisonment expire. It is a very interesting question, and | we hope the Justices will require a satisfactory answer,