The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-24 00:00:00

by deed, but by will. The late repentance of an owner might restore to his slaves at his death the priceless boon of which he had robbed them during life. True, the power was but sparingly exercised ; for testamentary manumission, even when contemplated, was, lik e other acts of post humous justice among ourselves, too often deferred too long. The daughters of JEFFERSON— of the man who penned that memorable declara tion, " that all men are born free and equal " were sold after his death ; beauty and accomplish ments, and the refinement acquired by conversing at their father's table with the noblest of a land then more truly noble than now, serving only to raise their price in the market. Hut it might have been otherwise had death waited for the execution of a purpose which we will not doubt that the great Virginian entertained. Freemen then expounded their laws in favour of freedom, and deathbed compunctions might issue in the redress of wrong. But progress is a wondrous and a fearful thing. Public opinion now con demns repentance, and law forbids restitution. Henceforth, in Virginia, the cradle of indepen dence, the confines of freedom, a testator cannot set his living property free, though it he his own flesh and blood. Truly, if this were not the latest Transatlantic " improvement," we might be misled into regarding it as Satan's masterpiece. We do not forget that in speaking of American slavery we speak of an institution bequeathed by the mother country to her Western offspring. Were merely its existence in question, we should be tongue-tied by our own original delinquency. We have no right to call upon the slave-holding South to emulate the sacrifices which we made in the West Indies, under more favourable circum stances, yet with such questionable results. It is the progressive character of the Institution, as exhibited in the history of the United States, that authorizes, nay calls on us to protest. We have a deep interest in the prosperity of America, and we see that prosperity imperilled by the aggressive, unprincipled slave policy of the South, and the culpable apathy or vacilla tion of the North. Since the first formation of the Union upon the avowed principle of restrict ing slavery to a minimum, a ser►es of changes have taken place, all, alas! in one direction. The slave-holding States have successfully pur sued a system of encroachment, in spite of a de sultory, though occasionally vigorous, resistance from the men of the North. To trace this system through a development of so many years would exceed the limits of a newspaper article. On this head we would refer our readers to an able summary (by an American writer) in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1856. There they will see the full record of those successive inroads on the original constitution of the Union which have gradually made the slave-interest predominant in the Congress of the Great Re public—the annexation of Texas, the violation of the Missouri compromise, the Fugitive Slave Law, the Kansas outrages, all the wrongs against which CRANNING, and STORY, and WEnsTEit, and more recently SUMNER and PARKER, so eloquently yet so vainly protested. Let them then reperuse the Alabama Resolutions—to which we so lately drew their notice—let them consider the avowed designs of the South on Cuba, and ponder the awful significance of the decision which has prompted our present remarks. They will then admit that we show no unfriendly spirit towards America when we contrast the Vir ginia of 1789 with the Virginia of 1858, or call on the free nations of the North to resist the dictation of 200,000 slaveowners. We are convinced that nothing but a deter mined and united resistance can check that long progressive evil, whose motto, thus far, has been " Vestigia nulls retrorsum." The slave-holding States must be made to feel their own intrinsic weakness, or a conflict is inevitable, which will end in the disruption of the Union. To tem porize is to lose ground. Better an immediate struggle in Congress, however bitter, than a gradual drifting into civil war. We wish we could share the hope recently expressed in an able article in the Daily Nears, that Virginia will be found in such a struggle on the side of freedom. It is quite true, as our contemporary remarks, that slavery has not thriven, and can not thrive, in Virginia ; that, independent of her glorious associations with great historic names— names of men who could not think or sneak of slavery but as a curse and a burden—she would be more prosperous and more powerful as the THE PRESS, JULY 24, 1858. southern frontier of freedom, than as the northern outpost of servitude. It is quite true, we trust, that she numbers many sons who would fain see her resume the lofty place she once occupied as the champion of liberty, unwillingly tolerating even the remains of an institution by which she felt herself degraded. But shortsighted cupidity too often gives a stronger impulse than the most far-seeing patriotism ; and the fetters of habit, though little felt, are not easily broken. And, whatever effect it may produce as a warning to free States, we fear that as regards Virginia the fresh effi)rt to perpetuate slavery, to which we have this day called attention, can scarcely be deemed a good augury. If in any sense hope ful, it can be so only as the darkest hour is said to precede the sunrise. "OF POSSIBLE FISHES." IT continually happens that the perversion or deterioration of a thing makes us forget the purposes which it once answered or was calcu lated to answer. Few can recognize the " high mettled racer" in the "hack on the road "—the fashionable chariot of other days in the dilapi dated " po'chay" of a country inn. We see what it is, and make the best of it, without troubling ourselves as to what it might have been. There has been an amusing instance of this in the recent discussions concerning Father Thames. Much has been well said as to the differences between a river and a cesspool—as to the fluid character which ought to belong to water uncon gealed, and as to the close connection between filth, miasma, and cholera. Some have ventured to point out that it would be desirable that Thames water should be fit for washing—a few have even gone to the length of hinting that it ought to be available for making tea ; one or two enthusiasts may even have dreamed of drinking it at some future date in all its native simplicity, without mixture or infusion. But no one appears to have remembered that fish may live in water— in fact have rather a habit of doing so; and that but for a great national blunder—what Handy Andy's judicious parent would call " our own goostherumfoodle"—living, breathing vertebrates, with the corporate attributes of capacity for eat ing and being eaten, might abound and thrive even between Putney and Greenwich. Such a feat on the part even of the most unscrupulous of eels has been lately so impossible that the said reach has become in that respect a locus condo matus. Bat Wicksteed says that fish can live at Leicester; And Wicksteed is an henout able man. If " deodorization " produces such effects in a provincial stream, why not in our metropolitan river ? It is a mistake to suppose that our British fish (excepting perhaps the grayling, the vendace, the char, and the great lake-trout) are very nice as to the quality of the water they inhabit. Some appear to be rather of the mind of the maid-servant from the fens, who objected to the water at her new place because it had neither taste nor smell. Many a London angler fills his basket even now at the East India and St. Katherine's Docks, though directly communi cating with an utterly polluted river. The large and ever-increasing traffic on the narrow estuary of the Tay does not appear to interfere with the free migration of the salmon and sea-trout to and from their breeding-places up that river and its tributaries. In truth, if the Board of Works prove themselves equal to their responsibilities, there is no reason why the salmon, that " signor and rich burgher of the flood" (to say nothing of many humbler tribes of water-citizens), should not ere long be restored to his old haunts in the Thames. It is now little more than twenty-five ears since the last salmon was killed in the Thames by fair angling off "Monkey Island." The fish weighed twenty pounds, and was sold for a twenty-pound note! Stray individuals have since been taken with the net, but none, we believe, during the last ten years ; and the breed is now utterly extinct. It might, however, be restored without the smallest difficulty, but for the utterly impassable nature of " the pool." Salmo salar's gills are not constructed for dealing with an opaque semi-fluid, and he has no appa ratus for holding his nose. The process of artificial breeding might else be adopted with success from Bray up to Iffiey-lock, and a penalty against the destruction of fish out of season would lead to a rapid multiplication of that finny monarch who was of old the in aldermanic ;Teat rival of turtle caput ccence at many a City festival. Compared with some of the results to he anti cipated from " Thames l'urification," this pett v revolution in Fin-land may seem unimportant. Yet it is not quite unworthy of consideration. In the first place, any additional productiveness of Father Thames as a fish river would he so much clear gain. A few thousand large salmon taken yearly close to the market, and command ing (as Thames salmon always have done) the very highest price, would be no contemptible source of income—yet nobody would be injured or interfered with. It would not he as when a sheep-ground is turned into a deer-forest; but a luxury would be gained without the loss of any useful product. The Thames flounder, too, and probably the shad and the smelt—humbler yet not valueless articles of diet—would reappear in reaches whence they have been but lately ex pelled, causing a renewed demand for useful labour. But, we confess, our view in calling attention to this subject has not been limited to gains derivable from the Thames, or to the en couragement of the gentle art in its waters. W e wish to invite the notice of our legislators to the unsatisfactory state of the law with regard to river fisheries in Great Britain, and to the un productiveness of our streams, occasioned by a neglect of the most obvious precautions. The suicidal selfishness of individuals is permitted to bar the ascent of the migratory salmonielse to their spawning beds so completely, that, with out the special causes which have been at work in the Thames, they have become extinct, or nearly so, in many of our southern and western streams, and confined to the lowest portion of others. Let our M.P.'s, during their approach ing vacation rambles, inquire (we take our in stances promiscuously) what is the price of Severn salmon at Shrewsbury—how many "fish" or gilse are taken yearly in all the streams of Hampshire, or even of Devonshire. Let them ask what has made a salmon or sea-trout a rare guest in Windermere—why the flyfisher in the Teme rarely encounters a smolt—how many hundred yards of the pretty little stream at Linton a salmon is permitted to ascend. Let them gain some insight into the mysteries of close-time in Scotland—let them see how stake nets can blockade an estuary, or learn the dodges by which even the scanty benefit of a " Sun y flood" is denied to up-stream proprietors. They will, we are sure, feel amazed at once at the general neglect of an important subject, and at the marvellous blunders and inconsistencies which have marked the few attempts actually made at legislation. There is no earthly reason but the senseless cupidity of a few individuals, and the ignorance or indifference of a series of Governments, why the supply of those most valuable fish, the salmon and sea-trout, should not increase again far more rapidly than it has diminished. The Duke of SUTHERLAND (happily "monarch of all he surveys," so as to be able to act alone) has shown how much can be done in this respect. In truth, the system of artificial breeding, now beginning to be thoroughly understood in this country, has quite removed the difficulty which formerly would have been found in restoring the stock where it had become extinct. The French Government has set us an excellent example by propagating salmon, trout, and even grayling artificially in a multitude of rivers for the public benefit. We have more mis chief to undo, but Great Britain is " a land of brooks and rivers of waters," and Englishmen are emphatically a nation of anglers, so that neither opportunity nor zeal in the cause ought to be wanting. We shall return to this subject at some future day ; meanwhile, we would briefly say that in our opinion the following points especially deserve the attention of Government and of the public :-Ist. Early close-time, to be strictly enforced. 2nd. Severe penalties for destroying fish vßien unfit for food. 3rd. The limitation of weirs, traps, &c., so as to have a fair passage for fish always open. 4th. Restriction of stake-nets. sth. The encouragement of arti ficial breeding. 6th. A year of jubilee for streams nearly exhausted. In some of these, apparent interference with private rights may be inevitable; but all parties will ultimately be gainers. The proprietor of the celebrated goose that laid the golden eggs would have owed thanks to any one who had prevented his cutting her throat. 'tie fl y ti- 'ty so Dn - he lie ed a , ut of ler ar 'x- ful ng to n. Ve he to Ln- a he to to or !To of h- In- of h" of am ►re he ny at 4et of :e- -e y . he at Leh at he nd of Dst ild it ND to :an of kly ed en ne an ut, of is- of ire icr be at fly its !nt be For he iir on ti- or Re, be be )se ler