102

THE EXAMINER.

A A AC,

the pristine vigor of the race remains unimpaired,

“A Gadibus usque auroram & Gangem.”

‘The one indubitable moral deducible from this now quashed rebellion is, that the East, with all its varied religions and diverse social systems, will be opened to the humanizing agencies of the civilization of the West—that the re-organi- zition of the social and political systems, which have hitherto obtained among the * children of the sun, will be based upon the only true foundation which can have any chance of success in the present age—the intelligent developement of the resources of the country, and the consequent exercise of the mental and physical abilities of the people. The intro-

duetion of railways, and the closer connection with Europe

and the other quarters of the Globe, consequent upon the em- earth peace and good-will toward men,”’ has heen successfully their sanctuary is within the territory of the United States, ye ployment of steamers, have already begun their civilizing work, | ;ansmitted. One important reflection suggests itself to the that the federal authority shall have no force within their

own upon the sandy ocean-

| billows of the Atlantic? Low d ihed, while navies ride and tempests rage above it, will ~ | electric cable, ‘‘ stretching many & rood,”’ transmit with lightning speed the ever coursing spark, pregnant with mean- | ing. This truly cosmopolitan enterprise, which willemphati- | cally annihilate time and space, has been delayed for a season in consequence of an accident which is always to be expected the first attempt in an undertaking so new and so extensive. |

The reviewer of the incidents of 1858 will, we hope _ believe, have it in his power to record the laying of the ocean wire as un fait accompli, and that the noble and appropriate | Sentiment with which the Queen of England shall greet the | <<unecrowned monarch’’ of the West, as the fitting inauguration ory to God in the highest, and on |

j .

| in

of the new connection, ‘* Gl

th in the States of our brother im the Js/ander under consideration, imitating our country may Jonathan. at Donnybrook Fair, or some other congenial scene for a row,

Halfway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, flying by offering his coat-tails to be trodden upon, just because he a ¢ begins to feel that he is getting “ blue moulded for want of I bating.””

at there is something rotten

from contact with the religious and social institutions o

Christianity, a horde of dupes and knaves, gathered principal- i ly from among the cver-worked, under-paid and under-fed In our No. of the Mth ult., we stated that the Bank hag

having had preached to them the gospel of | applied to the Government through some of ite Directors sensuality and physical comforts, have sought @ realization of first, for a suspension of their Chatter, ey that the shareholderg the spiritual promises in the seizure with unhallowed hands, would not have to be Gine upon, While money was scarce, to ir wishes. | P®y in the balance of their stock, as the law required them to

Not content with having founded in the previously-wilderness | do before the ond of Pebranty i—second, the Government was tract of Utah a settlement exclusively their own, having been | armen to enthoxice the Directors to stop 7 payments ; and d to build a temple to their unknown god, those men third, the Government was asked to continue the reeeipt.of of the Bank noves at the Treasury—(as it would give them —the Directors offering, of their own accord, we

believe, to deposit security in the Government’s own warrants,

millions of Europe,

and no measured grasp, of the material objvcts of the

allowe

have had the audacity to proclaim that, although the site of) t currency)

and this outburst on the part of the natives, probably arising | »ind of him who ponders on this subject. One wire will be }orders—that they have erected and will maintain an impe-. whenever the amount of Bank notes in the Treasury would be.

in some degrie from ihose very improvements, has but acceler-! ytterly inadequate to the exigencies of communication between | rium in imperio, and acting on this idea, they have offere ‘ ¥ |

ated their adoption to a greater extent; and thus it is, * Taere’s a Divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-bew them as we will.” Terning our thoughts to the parent country, we cannot bat

° i

feel a sentiment o possesses, which are applicable at any moment to the sup- pression of resistance to its authority in any portion of its Although the Indian disturbance,

world-wide dominions.

which we have just been noticing, has been put down without |

. . } the assistance of any of the troops despatched from the seat |

of the central pe-ver to the scene of active operations, yet| notwithstanding the frightful proportions which the mutiny |

. . | at first presented to the distant gaze of Europe, the conscicus |

power of the nation pursued the even tenor of its way—the

aie . a : . , ‘ ri : ea thie i ah} Yo | Britain to wage successful wars against so many foes—received | addition to her little army of a crew, making a speed of; that the degenerate races which inhabit the Central and o o e

5 , ° | noteven a momentary check to their onward progress ; and |

° 79 - _ » ‘ nh . the nation could afford to employ some of her overflowing | Waves — surely ‘* Leviathan’’ deserves her name. The unfor- = ’ ‘ 5) .

strength to crush rebellion, while her teeming millions still | thronged the factory, still tilled the field. While steam was | urging on their long ocean journey the barques which were | bearing the soldier to his distant battle-field—while yet the | canyas wooed the uncertain breeze which was to speed the | eagle to his quarry beneath the southern Cross—while a navy | of no small capacity was being employed in the transmission | of men and materials to the distant East—the busy hive of industry at home continued to give forth as ever the unin- terrapted sounds cf activity and energy. Although bad men for bad purp ses-might seek to separate her Eastern dominions from that fuir Queen ‘throned in the West,’’ their efforts could not, and did not,impede the prosecution of the most stupendous scheme that men or nations ever conceived, or at- tempted to reduce to practical operation. When the old| Roman, some 2,000 years agone, anathematized the breast of tripis brass of him who first violated the decrees of fate in traversing the ocean, which had been intended as a barrier to the inter-communication of the peoples it separated, he little | dreamed that from the insulated Britons, the “eto penitus |

divisos orbe Britannos,’”’ would be extended across the then | untraversed-Atlantic a means of instantaneous communication | to a world then unknown,—little did the heroie Genoese | imagine, while sastained in his daring enterprise by a knowledge | far beyond that of his age, he ploughed his way o’er the wild waste of waters to America, that the day would come when that physica! science, of which he was so devoted a/| student, would enable the future inhabitants of the Continent which he discovered to communicate by means of the light- ning, and with the celerity of its motion, with the Europe he had left. Among those facts which go té justify the adage, *‘ truth is strange, stranger than fiction, *’ the electric telegraph must occupy the firstrank. How long that relation to other discoveries and human appliances is to subsist, we know not; for who can tell *‘ what the morrow may bring forth?’ Bat certainly at present the limited use of that great discovery stands at the head of the list of instances of science made the handmaid of man. And when it is considered that experiments have shewn that this subtle messenger can be transmitted through thousands of miles of the connecting wire, with the same speed and unerring regularity that dis- tinguishes its transit between the comparatively brief stations at preseat employed—the mind is lost in contemplation of the wonders it is destined to achieve. That the connection by submarine telegraph by Europe and America can and will be established, we entertain no doubt. The recent failure by the breaking of the cable in paying it out, does not for one moment tuilitate against the feasibility of the scheme ; in fact, in an undertaking of such magnitude and novelty, it was only reasonable to suppose that some accident would occur to mar the first attempt, and by its failure teach the able and scientific mem the best means of rendering their ultimate success of a more perfect and permanent nature, than would probably have characterised the establishment of the first con- neetion,had it been accomplished without cheek or interruption. The discovery by Lieutenant Maury, of the American Navy, of the great subaqueous plateau, stretching from Cape Race, in Newfoundland, to Cape Clear in Ireland, appears to have been originally designed for a track between the Old World and the New, and no reasonable doubt exists that ere another year shall have fled, the communication by telegraph will

| Europe and America, and we shall in a few years have to) } . . . . . . ae - . i |notice the laying of additional lines until the repeated an ;nouncements shall cease to attract attention. 1

| Another stupendous monument of the science and enterprise

| ‘« Leviathan.’’? We trust soon to hear that she floats ou the!

‘element whose * raffian billows’’ in their angriest mood will | be powerless to impede or retard her progress, as with the | power of five thousand horses and her clouds of canvas, she | leaves the gale behind her. One-eighth of a mily in length, supplied with an elsetric telegraph for the transmission of |

orders, having eight several compartments, each the size of a | first rate London Hotel, carrying on each side a fully equipped

| steamboat of twenty-five horse power, and one hundred and | encouragement which they afford to the spirit of aggression |

!

aris of peaco—the constant prosecution of which had enabled | fifty tons capacity, capable of carrying ten thousand men in towards other and weaker powers. We are ready to admit |

twenty-five miles an hour, not affected by adverse winds or

tunate interraptions to her launch, have, we trust, been finally overcome ; and the question asked of old by the tormented man of Uz, ** Canst thou draw out Leviathaa with a hook,’’ has received an affirmative solution. Prospero’s directions to his ** tricksy sprite,’’ ‘* Be thou here again ere the Leviathan can swim a league,’? might have taxed the delicate Ariel's powers of locomotion, had he had to contend with this sea- monster.

Ere we leave this part of our subject it is pleasing to reflect upon the fact, that Europe is at peace within itseli—that the nations which not long since were wasting their resources in endeavours to inflict mutual injuries, are now employing their energies in the more ennobling arts which conduce alike to th? prosperity of nations and individuals. Although we are not of those who believe that the lion is quite ready to lie down with the lamb—that the swords are awaiting their conversion into the usefel bat unromantic implements of bucolic industry, —we have an abiding faith in the pacific tendencies of com- merece, and consider that man is becoming more alive to the conviction that his material interests are best promoted by a state of peace, and that the idea is spreading ameng the masses

+ .

_ “ War is a game, which, were their subjects wise, hings would not play ot.” We will now anticipate the action of the oceanic téiegraph and the mammoth steamer, and, crossing the Atlantic, consider some few of the figures which the history of America for the

past

past year has held up to the mirror of time.

While in Europe the characteristics of national government or national misrule are invested with more cr less dignity, arising from the antiquity of institutions, which, however illy adapted to the necessities of the present age, nay, in many cases offering positive obstacles to the march of improvement, are still venerable and picturesque, as some Grecian temple of old, dedicated to a worship long since discarded, still forms the beauty of the landscape, and claims our admiration for its fair proportions, though unsuited to our present. purposes, — we look in vain for anything approaching, not the dignified, not the chivalrous, but even the respectable, in the materials which are constantly thrown up to the surface of the ever-seething cauldron of American domestic politics. In proof of our asser- tion we need cite no more than one or two facts noturious to the world, and undeniable even by the most ardent apologist for the eccentric forms in which the ‘* universal Yankee nation”’ sometimes manifests its sense of the enjoyment of that freedom, from the blessed rays of which the rest of the world has been re- ligiously debarred by the monarchs of the Eastern Hemisphere.

During the last year, the city of New York, the London of America, the virtual capital of the Union, the place where merchants most do congregate, was, for days, the scene of most disreputable violence between two factions contending for the control of the city ; and never did Guelph and Ghibelline show more unhallowed spirit in the City of Flowers than was exhi- bited in the internecine contests for the control of the munici- pal affuirs of New York by the late Mayor and his opponents. We ask our readers’ attention to the following extract from a daily paper published in the city which vice and violence bid fair | to elevate to a high rank in the list of communities infamous | forerime. This, as the extract itself declares, is but the reccrd | of one day’s crimes, and crimes of the highest degree. What | must be the moral state of that society where so many violent outrages go to form the bloody picture of one single day? What must be the state of the community through whjch the

unite the two countries. That two such nations, the one the vigorous off-shoot of the other, having carried to its new home the language, ideas, and as far as they were applicable to her condition, the institutions of the parent state,—the other and the elder, after the subsidence of the angry feelings induced

by the severance of the eld Colonial relations, gladly wel-| coming her offspring into the family of nations, — should be |

connected by eueh a bond, should be united by so close a tie, is matter of congratulation not merely to Britons an Ameri- cans, but to Europe and the world at large. When we en- deavour to.consider the marvellous results which must follow in the wake of such an enterprise, we are lost in amazement at the momentous revolution in the moral, sucial and political relations of the two continents which it is destined to effect. Time was, not far remote, when he who crossed the Atlantic was considered as pre-eminently a man of mark, and was re- ceived en his retura to his family with all the consideration due to him who had gone down to the sea in ships, and had seen the wonders of the great deep. Steam has rudely dis- solved that spell, and the voyager now counts with certainty upon the day on whieh he shall have completed his traverse of the ocean. But great as has been the change in this respect, speedy and safe as is the transmission of intelligence between Europe and America, what can be imagined of greater marvel than the instantaneous eommunication by the electric spark through thousands of miles of wire laid far below the avgry

| stream of moral and mental depravity flows with volume which,

though unseen, is still sufficient to throw up on its turbid sur- | face such evidences of the strength and pollution of its current?

“Crime in New Yorn.—We are this morning again ob-

liged to surrender a large portion of our paper to the details \of the fearful crimes which are running over the city like some terrible pestilence. Three persons were slashed and hacked with knives at a low den in Water street yesterday morning; one died immediately, and the other two are scarcely ulive. A man in the Bowery was stabbed by rufians while defending his own premises. The young man shot a few days since in Canal street, died at the hospital yesterday morning. In the upper part of the city three or four ruffians dragged a* young girl into a Jumber-yard, imitated the murderous hounds who killed the poor old, German woman in Greenwich street, and left their victim ‘for dead. A woman stabbed by a burglar, and highway robbery, complete the * Bloody Record,” so far as New York city is concerned, for this day only. In the now old jand stale murder which took place in William street as !ong ago as Tuesday night, nothing new has been develeped, except that avon of the victim is held to bail upon some slight suspicion.”—New York Tribune.

If it should be objected that we are drawing general ¢onelu- sions frem particular premises—that we have attributed as a |Teproach to the whole Confederacy of States the acts which joons been committed in a single city, we can point to some matters of a more national interest and magnitude to show |

/less genial clime where Jabour wrests from reluctant nature

q 80 considerable as to render such security expedient. We ‘believe this isa true statement of the nature of the appli- ‘cation made to the Government. We obtained it on unques- - : Sa : . with all its attendant abominations, must succumb to the more | Conanle autlenny, and we made it known for the information powerful and more pure institutions and principles which all | of the public at large, and not from any petty desire to get

successful opposition to the troops of the Union sent to enforce

the authority of the general government. That Mormonism,

admirati a >a] “sources it | . e ; i y ates > 3 +t] ¢ ized | . . . . . i y i 10V 5 aimiration at the marvellous resources it of the age is found in that mighty steamer, 80 fitly baptized but Mormons recognize in theory, if not in practice, as the | undue credit for the Government at the expense of the Bank.

| The Government acceded to only that part of the request which lveferred to the receipt of the Bank notes at the Treasury; and _ in so doing we expressed our conviction that the Executive had sequies may be performed, civilization wili have cause to re- oot in no oe spirit towards an institution, some of the joice that the foul imposture has at length ceased to ** smell | Gireotoes of which were not supposed tu entertain very friendly feelings towards the Executive. This seems to have been gall 'and wormwood to the writer in the Islander, whose bile was, ‘no doubt, previously stirred by the reflection, that the great Rothschilds of this community were compelled by any circumstances to ask a favour of men in power whom they so cordially detest ;—and, in order to show that the Government granted no favour at all, but declined to perform an act of justice, which leaves them responsible for the suspension of 'specie payments at the Bank,—the indignant and injudicious advocate of the latter—(the shareholders of which might well exclaim, O save us from our friends!)—has published such a statement of the transaction between the Bank and the Government as might well make any man blush to own it, and fully explains his recourse to the screen of an anonymous correspondent. This writer states that the Government were simply asked for a promise “to introduce a Bill into the Assembly, at its next meeting, toso alter the Bank Charter as to enable the Directors to postpone the call for the remaining £7500 of the subscribed stock,’’ &. Not a word about stopping specie payments—not a word about notes being received at the Treasury: these very important facts are carefully kept out of sight. ** The Directors,”’ says the writer under review, *‘on being refused so reasonable, and to all appearance, 80 necessary a request ’’—(that is, a suspension of the Charter, so as to postpone the payment of the balance of shares)— ‘* in order to save the Bank Charter, deemed it most prudent to suspend for the time being, the payment of their notes in specie,’ &c. From all we can understand, the Directors had determined on this course from the very moment. they became aware of their probable losses by protested bills, otherwise they would not have included in their application to the Government a request that the latter would give them — authority to suspend specie payments. Is it not evident, then, that the writer of the article in the Islander must be lost to all sense of shame, when he secks to throw upon the Govern- ment the responsibility, (or, the odium if he likes), attached to the suspension of specie payments, as he does in the fol- lowing sentence :—** Now, it must be quite obvious, that had the Government met the request of the Directors in anything else than ‘a churlish spirit,’ there would be no necessity whatever for a suspension of specie payments by the Bank.” We have placed the last part of the sentence in italics, so as to render the falseliood which it conyeys more conspicuous.

sole influences which are to regulate man in his social or indi- vidual relations, it were a libel on God's providence to doubt ; and whatever may be the circumstances under which its ob-

rank to Heaven.”’

Another peculiarity of the institutions of the States is the

|

Southern portions of the Continent —the all-unworthy de- scendants of the country which sent forth its Columbus to | discover, and its Cortes and Pizarro to subdue, the Western World — offer many temptations to the more energetic and en-

terprising Northerner whose avarice and ambition may chance to be excited by the contrast offered by the sunny South to the comparatively barren meed. This spirit, after manifesting itself with offensive effrontery to other powers, has, for a year or two past, shamed the civilization of the world by the open and unblushing audacity with which it sent forth from the principal ports of the Union its devotees under the notorious Walker. We are happy in the thought that hitherto they left the shores of their country, invading a people whose only crime was to be found in its weakness, not ‘* conquering or to conquer,’’ but ignominiously defeated, and the remnant of the piratical band, their hopes of fame and profit miserably dis- pelled, had returned to the place from whence they came, ‘* beggared and ruined by their strumpet fortune.’’? Although not openly recognized by the general government, to the autho- rity of which they were of course amevable, and which owed it to itself as a sovereign nation to prevent the lawless inya- sion of a friendly power by its subjects, there can be no doubt that the popularity-courting government of the United States would not, or dared not, prevent the organization and departure of the ruffians, who, following the fortunes of their pirate leader, carried all the crimes, without the redeeming virtues, of war into the unoffending territory of Nicaragua. The last accounts render it not improbaole that the waters of the Gulf of Mexico now roll over the lifeless bodies of those whose self-imposed mission was the compulsory revolution of a nation which, however torn by internal dissension, had given no cause of offence to its powerful Northern neighbours. This state of affairs can but bave the effect of diminishing the confidence in their stability which the theory of Republican institutions is so adapted to inspire, and which their practical operation so thoroughly obliterates from the minds and affections of those

who live under other forms of government. We are sneeringly told, in reference to security being offer-

ed to cover the amount of Bank notes received at the Treasury, that not many days ‘‘ since, a single bawbee would be better security than all the treasure in the Treasury.’’ We should be sorry to retort upon the Bank, under the new circumstances in which it has been placed relatively to the Government, in the same ‘* churlish spirit’? which prompted the above remark ; but we may observe, that if the Treasury had declined to re- ceive Bank paper in payment of duties, either now, or at any previous time, which it might have done if the Government were so disposed, there would be no discount upon Treasury warrants ; and we fancy the Bank would be in a rather awk- ward predicament if it tried to force into circulation notes which it was not prepared to respond to in specie, and which trades-people were generally beginning to reject only a month or two ago.

We sincerely hope that a majority of the Bank Directors do not endorse the narrow-minded sentiments of the writer we its consequent crime. ‘There can be no doubt that the depression | ja 16 peen noticing, Asan auxiliary to trade and commercial will be but temporary, and that the recuperative energies of | enterprise, every man in the community should rejoice to see our people will soon restore affairs to their former healthy the Bank in a prosperous condition; but far better would it state ; and with the expression of our wishes for their indivi- _ be for us to fall back upgn the tender mercies of private mo- dual and collective prosperity, we bid our friends, one and all, | ney-shavers, and let those in trade struggle on as they best ‘‘A happy New Year.” may with a shackled commerce —than that we should have a close-borough of money-dealers, made powerful by their union

THE BANK, GOVERNMENT AND EXAMINER. and co-operation—inflamed by the angry. passions of contend- ie ing politicians, and eagerly watching for an opportunity of

No person wh@ has read the article ** communicated’’ to the ' putting the serews upon their adversaries. It is a most suici- Islander, and published in that paper of the 25th ultimo, in dal policy for the Government of any country and its banking reference to a previous editorial in this journal on the affairs institutions, to be at loggerheads. Hatred on one side is sure of the Bank, and the application to the Government on its be- | to beget hatred on the other; and instead of being mutually half—could have entertained the slightest doubt as to the serviceable, as they easily might, they will be a source of great source from whence it emanated. That the learned leisure of annoyance and discredit to the country which has the misfor- a principal stockholder has been taxed to produce it, is indeed tune to witness their bickerings. We are glad that we have the first conjecture that could be formed; for, keeping in view | not yet reached such a melancholy state of affairs as to render the losses which the Corporation are sure to sustain from the |g censure of this kind applicable to us in all its force ; and it insolvency of a certain bill-drawer, none but a holder of many ‘is gratifying to reflect, that whatever trifling misunderstanding shares would exhibit so much of the frailty of poor human’ pay have heretofore arisen between some of the Bank Direo- nature as to work himself into a towering passion in vouch- {tors and our Government, it has not been owing to any want safing a very i:.judicious and ill-timed vindication of the eha- | o¢ good faith on the part of the latter.

racter and standing of the Bank. It would be very proper, and, | indeed, praiseworthy in a public writer to uphold the good| Since the above observations were penned, we have received

name of the only banking institution we have in the country, |2 communication signed ** Fair Play,” in reply to the article in

The length to which this article has extended, warns us that our readers may be approximating to that limit beyond which patience ceases to be a virtue ; and although many topics, on which we would fain dwell, present themselves to our mind as appropriate subjects for a few reflections—we gladly turn our mental gaze to our own Island Home, and bless God that its people have been spared any participation in the troubles and privations which have surrounded many a once happy hearthstone with mourning and anguish.

In the free exercise of the principles on which our political institutions are based, we have seen the past year glide into the wallet wherein Time puts alms for oblivion without the fearful outrages to which the denizens of other countries have been subjected. We have all ample cause to rejoice that, not- withstanding the commercial distress the effects of which we have of course felt in common with the rest of the world, the

difficulties have not entailed upon us want of employment and

_when it should happen to be unjustly assailed; and so im-|the Islander ; but as our views and those of our correspondent

pressed are we with the conviction, that no commercial com- | are early identical, we forbear for the present to make use of munity can prosper without such an establishment, that we his letter. Our correspondent dwells at some length on the would fain be one of the first in offering our poor services to Silly comparison instituted by the writer in the Islander do battle against its assailants, But when no assault is made between the Directors of the Bank and the members of the — when no complaint is preferred, and not a word of censure Government, respecting the pecuniary circumstances of the uttered — we cannot help feeling surprised and amused when parties. ‘*‘ Fair Play’? says he is quite satisfied that the latter we see a pugnacious gentleman, like the author of the article |are as well able to pay twenty shillings in the pound of the