The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-30 00:00:00

CONNECTICUT AND FREE SUFFRAGE.

(From the New York Tribune, Oct. 4)
Connecticut, in her election on the 2d, refused the right
of suffrage to the colored people within her limits. The
oldest of her citizens who went to the polls may live to
regret that act of short-sightedness and injustice. She has
committed wrong from pure love of it, for nobody will
pretend that the decision would, either one way or the
other, particularly affect the political character of the State,
so far as votes are concerned. There were only, according
to the last census, about 2,000 negroes in the State who
would be entitled to the suffrage, and if they all voted
with either party it would not change the result, presum-
ing parties to continue to hold the relative positions they
have for a few years past. The Republicans could, if they
had chosen, have given the right of suffrage to the blacks
in spite of the whole Copperhead votes in the State. Not
to do so was to add just so much moral strength to the
Copperhead party, and to weaken their own. The act
is simply one of gross injustice, which can only be
accounted for by the fact that even four years of
terrible war has not been enough to knead the
dough out of the old pro-Slavery subserviency of
Connecticut to their Southern slaveholding masters.
They hated black men because savory whipped them into
it, and they haven't acquired manhood enough, even from
the last four years' teaching, to have got over it. The old
marks of the slave-driver's whip are as plain on the back
of Connecticut to-day as they are on the backs of the half-
emancipated blacks of the South.
The act makes the road before us to complete peace and
the restoration of the Union more difficult. That hereto-
fore 2,000 men in a voting population of 75,000 were dis-
franchised in Connecticut, though a very base wrong and
a signal outrage, was a matter of comparatively small
practical importance. But that such an evil example
should be followed and sustained by the moral influence
of Connecticut in depriving 800,000 loyal men at the
South of the right to vote is a fact the practical import-
ance of which cannot yet be calculated. Wrong is some-
times to be measured, not by the spirit that prompted it,
but by the consequences that follow. Injustice to the
black race has cost this nation dearly. It has dug the
graves of its first-born and its bravest. If we have not
yet learned to be wise, there are other lessons in store for
us to make us wiser. Connecticut, like Alabama, turns
her eyes backward to the old days of Slavery and Over-
seership, and in so doing assures Alabama that her struggle
for lost doMinion is not without hope. It is a recreancy
for which the price must be paid, if this act of Connecticut
is not stamped with universal reprobation.

The St. Louis Democrat says that a merchant left
that city lately, commissioned by a half dozen firms to visit
the markets of Great Britain, make purchases of bicarbo-
nate of soda, sal-soda, soda ash, caustic soda, Scotch pig
iron and Liverpool salt, and charter a vessel to bring the
same to New Orleans. Arrangements have been made for
ono of the steamers of the Atlantic and Mississippi Steam-
ship Line to receive the load of the vessel without its dis-
charge upon the wharf of New Orleans. it is estimated
that the o)st of freight from Liverpool to St. Louis will not
bo greater than the cost from New York to St. Louis.