The Sun.
London, England, 1867-01-26 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY 26, 1867.

Miscellaneous American News,

There will be three public levees:at the White
House during the present session of Congress; the
first on Jan. 27, the second on Feb. 7, and the
third on Feb. 22.

The President has transmitted to Congress a
message covering additional correspondence bearing
upon the arrest of Surratt. It contains nothing of
special importance. It is shown that St. Marie, the
informer, is on his way to America, having been paid
for his services ; it covers also a letter from the
secretary of the authorities at Malta, declining to
arrest Surratt on the ground of insufficient proof of
identity.
The following are the concluding words of the
President's Message, vetoing negro suffrage in the
district of Columbia :—" There is a limit, wisely
observed hitherto, which makes the ballot a privi-
lege and a trust, and which requires of some classes
a time suitable for probation and preparation. To
give it indiscriminately to a new class, wholly un-
prepared by previous habits and opportunities to
perform the trust which it demands, is to degrade
it, and finally to destroy its power, for it may be
safely assumed that no political truth is better esta-
blished than that such indiscriminate and all-embrac-
ing extension of popular suffrage must end at last
in its destruction."

The Storrs School is the name of a house just
erected for the education and religious instruction
of the freedmen in Atlanta, Georgia. It cost
$6,000, and is very complete in all its appointments.
The society of the Rev. Dr. Storrs, of Cincinnati,
were the chief contributors towards its erection.
The Philadelphia inquirer states that the freed-
men throughout the Southern States celebrated the
Ist of January—the anniversary of emancipation—
by processions, with banners, music, and speeches.
It adds that it is to the credit of the Southern
people that they did not interfere with these demon-
strations, although they were in some particulars
fantastic.

The plan for the central monument for the Gettys-
burg National Cemetery has been agreed upon. It
is to be a white marble shaft 47 feet high, costing
$47,500, with one or more statues by Rogers.
A contemporary remarks :—" The letter-carriers
of New York are out for the fourth time with their
annual poetical address to the public, printed in a
neat little pamphlet, which contains besides the
verses a good deal of information on almost all
points relating to the mail service in this city. We
find, for instance, that, during the first nine months
of 1866, the total number of letters from abroad
delivered by carriers in this city was 7,683,222, and
of city letters the number was 2,926,507. To this
total of 10,609,729 letters must be added 1,008,778
of newspapers. For the same time, between January
1 and September 30, there were collected from the
lamp-post boxes 9,609,646 letters, a much larger
number than one would have expected.
The Iron Age informs us that the United States
Government is now having made at Hartford, Con-
necticut, 100 battery guns of a new invention.
Fifty of them will have a one-inch bore, and
the balance one-half inch bore. This gun is
quite a curiosity to look at. The main characteristics
of this terrible weapon are, that it has a series of
barrels, with a carrier and lock cylinder, rigidly fas-
tened to the main shaft, and rotating simultaneously
and continuously by means of a crank, the cartridges
being fed into the carrier from the feed-boxes, thence
driving end-wise into the rear ends of the barrels,
then exploded and the empty cartridge cases with-
drawn, without any pause in the operation. The
incessant loading and firing are produced by the
simplest kind of mechanism, there being less parts
about the gun than in the Springfield musket.
This gun can be discharged at the rate of 200 shots
per minute. One of its features is that there is no
recoil which can affect the accuracy of the aim.
When the gun is once sighted at a given object
the same aim can lie maintained at the will
of the operator until thousands of discharges
take place. A lateral train motion of the gun may
be kept up if desired while the gun is being die_
charged, so that a perfect sheet of balls can be made
to sweep a section of any circle within its range.
As there is no escape of gas at the breech all the
force of the powder is expended in giving velocity
to the ball. A consideration which is claimed to be
of the very first importance in this gun is that every
cartridge must be either discharged or withdrawn
from the barrels, thus precluding such results as
were shown on the battle-field of Gettysburgh, where
of the 28,574 muskets collected after the battle,
24,000 were found to be loaded, 12,000 of them
containing two loads each, and 6,000 being charged
with from three to ten loads each, the cartridges
oftentimes being loaded without breaking them,
I and many inserted with the ball down first. The
I gun is light and easily transported. One of the
sizes now being made at the armoury discharges 58
100-inch calibre balls, weighs 225 pounds. The
other size discharges balls of one-inch calibre (nine
ounces in weight), and 'weighs between 500 and 600
pounds. The first-named has a range of about one
mile, and the latter upwards of two miles.
The Senate Commission on Railroads, in the city
of New York, unanimously adopted a resolution in
favour of one line of underground road from the
Battery to the City Hall Park, under Broadway,
with one branch connection under Chatham-street,
Bowery, and Third avenue, to the Harlem River ;
another running ou the west side, under Park place
(or Murray or Warren streets, or by the most
feasible route) to lludson street, thence under Ilud-
son street to Eighth avenue, thence under Eighth
Broadway Ninth a v e,e between u e o
the
avenue to Broadway, thence under Broadway to
Har-
lemN i Ninth
v: r . avenue,T he thenceline
underund er
Battery and City Hall Park, to be constructed only
as part of one or more of the through lines.
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Colorado, within five miles of one of the finest coal
veins in the territory. The discovery (says the ln-
telligencer) is important, as it indicates a continua-
'; tion of the precious metallic veins in a north-
I easterly direction nearly, if not quite, to the plains,
and in close proximity to the coal.
General Grant had a long interview with Secre-
tary Stanton on Jan. 2 upon the effect of the
recent decision of the Supreme Court upon
military commissions. It renders the Feeedmen's
Bureau and Civil Rights Bill nullities ; and while it
is allowed to stand, orders will be issued to prevent
any conflict of authority under it. Secretary
Stanton, General Geary,
General Palmer, and all
other
army officers who have been upon military
commissions, are hourly liable to criminal arrest
and trial. Senator Trumbull, who drew up both
the above bills,
agrees with the Supreme Court.
es i
This decision creates intense excitement, and it is
now claimed by the President that the Constitu-
tional Amendment, abolishing slavery, will yet be
declared a nullity.
We regret to add the following long list of fires
to those announced last week, which have entirely
or partially burned Winchester's petroleum refinery,
at Brooklyn,
-N X.—loss, $30,000, while two men
were fatally burned ; a clothing establishment on
Church-street, New York—loss, $34,000 ; the pre-
mises on Pine-street, New York, occupied by God-
dardandEdgarton—loss, $15,000 ; Ivins' building at
Philadelphia, used for manufacturing purposes—loss,
$75,000; the paper-mills of Cole, llall, and Denni-
son, at Bloomfield, N.J.—loss, $20,000 ; the
crockery warehouse of W. O. Farnsworth, at
Cleveland, Ohio—loss, $50,000 ; the slaughter-
house of Samuel W. Under, and several other
buildings at Cincinnati—loss, $15,000; the Caswell
Hotel and three livery stables at Honeyoye Falls,
$,OOO ; the Eagle
near Ricllester, N.Y.—loss, 15
Iron Works, the repair and paint shops of the Mil-
waukee and Prairie due Chien Railroad, and several
other buildings at Milwaukee—loss, $50,000, with
$20,000 insurance; 22 buildings at Warrensburg,
Mo.—loss,s2oo,ooo; the wagon factory of Hebron and
Schraer, and an adjoining building of St. Louis,
Mo.—loss, $15,000 ; Williams' Hotel at Chicago—
loss, $40,000 ; the warehouse of Van Newman,
Reed, and Co., the Deyton and Western Rail-
road office and the office of the Western Union
Telegraph Company at Richmond, Ind.--loss,
over $100,000; twelve buildings at Stillwater,
Minn.—loss, $25,000 ; and a hotel, storehouse, and
other buildings at Hull, C,W., opposite Ottawa,:a