The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-09-19 00:00:00

MR. JEFFERSON DAVIS ON A WAR
OF RACES.

Mr. Jefferson Davis spoke at a meeting held recently at
Memphis to denounce the massacre of negroes at Trenton, in
Tennessee. To express their horror of this crime was, Mr.
Davis said, a duty which they owed to their sires, to posterity,
to the living, and to the gallant dead who fell for the sacred
cause of Southern independence. lie added :

The negroes were not our enemies; why should they ;
become so? We are their friends. Yes, and the
Southern men are the only frien,lB they have to-day in
any part f the world. It becomes us to be their
friends. Every Southern man in his memory runs
back to the negro woman who nursed him; to the boy
who hunted and fished with him ; to the man who first
taught him to ride and swim ; and, as he grew to ,
manhood, the cordial welcome given him by the old
nurse with a tenderne,s scarcely inferior to that of his
own mother; and while he has such memories cluster-
ing around him, he cannot be the enemy to that useful
race which was the main strength of our country,
when we stood in this relation, which I believe God
intended us to occupy. If we have been diverted from
such relation, and if 'hostility has sprang no to any ex- •
tent, it has been the work of those incendiaries who
have come in to destroy the natural relations of the races,
awl thus fomenting a discord by producing the evils
which now exist in society.. With those white men who
believe in a war ,d races that the black may be exter-
minated, and see in this a future that is desirable, I
have no sympathy. The negroes were my friends in
the olden times. They were our protectors when our
brave men went to the field and the women and chil-
dren remained at home. It was they who brought the
Mississippi Valley into cultivation, and by them alone
i can that valley, n my opinion, ever be cultivated.
They are M necessary to us as we are to them; and,
that kind of relation existing between us, it is no
reason why the prosperity of the future shall not ex-
ceed that of the past. But Ido not intend to trench
upon a question on which every one has undoubtedly
formed his opinion. I would only say for myself, that
as I cannot have hostility to these deluded people, the
only feeling of indignation I have is against the white
men who havedisturbed this relation between us; who
have fomented discord; who have led the imaginative
negro into evil; against them, I say, I hurl the thun-
derbolt of your vengeance.

haughty. He was the orator of "authority," and spoke
in an authoritative tone. M. de Cormenin says of him:
—" He is austere in his personal appearance, and
everything about him is grave, even to his smile. This
rigidity of manner, deportment, maxims and speech is
by no means displeasing, from its contrast perhaps
with the buoyancy of the French character. In the
lecture room he is a pedagogue who lets you see under
his robe the small end of the cane. In his sermonising
he is a Calvinist, cold, sententious, and morose, who in-
culcates the fear rather than the love of God." M.
Guizot's one idea was " authority." " L'auterit4," said
M. Paul Louis Courier, "voil, Messieurs le grand mot
en France." It was the great word of M. Guizot's
career. "You are imperilling authority," was his
chief and perpetually reiterated argument against Re-
form. It was in the name of authority he helped in
his latter days to destroy the ancient freedom of the
Reformed Church of France. His personal influence
was not great, and such as he had was due rather to
his learning, his industry, and his renown, than to any
particular claim of presence or manner, and he leaves
behind him a reputation which will rest rather on his
literary labours than, like that of his great rival, on
his services to France.

down with a leap for a must be
accepted as an augury of yet lower figures to come;
for, with good crops everywhere, with large sup-
plies on their way to ns from America, with
Russian quotations coming down day by day
almost, with France and Germany needing little,
there is altogether such a conjunction of favour-
able circumstances as we have not had since 1864.
Bread cannot but be cheap this winter—cheap not
only compared with last, but as against an average
of recent years. There may not be so great a
plenty in some other grains ; but in none is
there a deficiency which will bear upon the price
of our chief stable, wheat, with an evil effect.
And the potato crop is sound and well, so that
everything supports the truth of the assertion. There
is no attempt to prophesy in the matter, for the yield
of all corn growing countries is gauged BO accurately
now that deception is scarcely possible. We know
that California can export as much, for instance, as
France is likely to want; and we shall soon know
what Australia will have to spare.

What cheap bread means to the community it
would take along story to tell. To a very large class
it will mean increased comfort in the mere necessaries
of living. It will probably mean, also, fewer paupers
and lower rates, though the late comparatively high
range of prices has been borne by the masses without
adding to our social burden in that way. There were
fewer paupers and vagrants in England at the begin-
ning of the present year than there had been for •
dozen years before. The fact is, the people are now
better able to pay high prices than they were years
ago. Still we may hope this winter to see the
number of the needy reduced yet further. But the
greatest effect which may be anticipated from this
cheapness is an increased activity in trade. Even dear
meat, which we may perhaps look for, will not per-
ceptibly hinder this revival ; because the working
classes cannot spend all their spare cash with the
butcher, and there are limits to the expenditure at the
ginshop as well. The money will therefore go for
articles of dress and manufactures of all kinds, and
the higher the wages the sooner will this quickening
be felt. It is a movement, too, that will pro-
bably extend far and wide. The countries having
much corn to sell, as well as those who buy, must
be benefitted. If Russia can send us fourteen million
hundredweight of wheat this year instead of seven,
she will want more goods from Leeds and Manchester,
though the price at which she sells her crop be consi-
siderably lower than that of last year. A plenteous
harvest lets loose many energies that have else to be as
It were pent up—tied to the one dull task of getting
food. There is spare force everywhere, spair gains
from labour expended, unused resources of many kinds,
that must tell speedily upon the course of trade. A
penny or two upon a loaf of bread seems but a slight
matter ; but when the loaves come to be counted by
hundreds of millions, we begin to comprehend what it
means. A penny a loaf saved would probably mean
by itself more than two millions in the pockets of the
people, and that is but the smallest part of it. The
half of that put into the hands of banke as addi-
tional capital to lend for trade, wouldn, have a
very distinct effect upon the price of money,
would help to make merchants able to buy cheaper,
and therefore to sell cheaper, all through the infinite
ramifications of trade. We could not, therefore, have
had a more infallible means of setting trade fairly on
its legs again than this harvest, which has gladdened
, men's hearts throughout the earth.

THE STOTJRBRIDG OBSERVER
moment, it

CUTTINGS FROM AMERICAN PAPERS.
The Saratoga Wriggle is the latest fashionable ab-
surdity adopted by the girl of the period.
A Chicago clergyman preached a sermon in a
billiard saloon last Sunday. He made nineteen points.
There are over ten million women in America, and
yet Toni Hutton, of Georgia, hung Maisel( on account of a
girl fifteen years old

- . -
Cmcinnati enthuses itself over the performances of
an armless violinist who is sufficiently bow-legged to play
the instrument with his toes.

"There," soliloquised an old toper in Davenport,
lowa, "see what all this temperance crusade praying has
done first busted the Lindell Hotel tank in St. Louis and
now overflows the whole South with water. It the women
keep on we'll have another flood, certain "
- •

A New York journal observes that it is easy to tell
that Westminster Abbey is the lounging place for Americans
on Sabbath afternoons, by the specimens o: line-cut chewing
tobacco that are subsequently swept out of the sanctuary.

A Pittsburg young lady who wee suddenly afflicted
with dumbness has suddenly recovered her speech, after
playing the part of the Silent Woman for seven months
What a pity she was not a contemporary of the medigeva
ecclesiastics I the ease would have made a capital miracle
The entire police force from Jefferson, Texas, was
arraigned before the mayor recently, on the charge of
vagrancy. The charge was preferred by the families of the
policemen, who stated that the parties under charge had no
visible means of support, as they had received but twelve
dollars from the city for the last five months.

Salt Lake hss been victimised by a showman, who
announced that he would cause a human body to appear
and disappear before the audience." He appeared, got their
money, and disappeared, lie tilled the programme.

- - - -
In an exchange newspaper a gentleman propose.
to exchangel an old and reliable bunion for a modern sort o.
barometer that will not get so ecited at every little shower
that comes up.

An Indiana circus drew an immense crowd by
advertising that Schuyler Colfax would enter the ring on a
bet 01 800 dollars that he could ride the trick mule. That
was obtaining business by a trick. is. A. alacDonald and Co.
secure orders in a more legitimate way. They furnish good
workmanship at a low price. They make doors, sashes,
blinds, Ac., at the Enterprise Mills, 217 to 225, Spear-street.

There are surely signs of reform. Out in Chicago a
man who had been approached by the "Interviewing
reporter,- got mad, knocked him down and soundly thrashed
his persecutor. We believe this lithe lint instance, but we
have long wondered why such a result has not followed in
many instances.
People who object to elaborate weddings should go
to lowa, I' S., where a marriage was recently celebrated
with the following brief ceremony -The happy pair Mere
told to join their right hands, and then asked, Do you want
one another?" Both replied, "Yes." " Well, then, have one
another "and the couple were man and wife

A lady whose family were very much in the habit
of making conundrums, was one evening asked by her hus-
band, in an excited tone, • • Why it was a cold dinner ? " "1
give it up," instantly replied the lady.
A street-corner telescope-man in Chicago, on a recent
night, had his instrument placarded, " splendid views of the
comet." lie charged ten cents a peep, and those who bought
the privilege saw a flaming body that covered three or
four degrees in the heavens. Business was Irisk, the "Oh !
oh's !" and Good graciouses 1"of the patrons exciting groat
curiosity. At length one of those prying incredulous fellows
investigated, and found that the telescope-man had painted a
nice little comet on the lens. At this the swindled people
pushed over the apparatus, and so scared the showman that
he cordially thanked the policeman who took him into
custody and protection.
- - - -

:
He was eighteen, and she sweet sixteen, and they
lived in Leavenworth, Kansas An inexorable parent forbade
the banns. So he of the eighteen years succeeded in raising
nine dollars, and with "Sweet sixteen" took the cars for the
friendly state of Missouri. After paying fare for the round
trip and 2 dollars 60 cent, t.. the parson, the twain, made
one, landed hi Leavenworth with the large fortune of I dollar
in greenbacks. Repairing to a saloon, ice-cream end cake
were called for, reducing the cash to two nickels. Nothing
daunted, two glasses of soda were swallowed, and the newly-
married couple started to begin life's wedded dream without
one copper. This is enterprise.