The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-25 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONLON, TUESOAY EVENING, DECEMBER 25, 1866.

Kir ,cellan

News.

NArKL NEWS FROM NORTH AMERICA.— A private
letter :from Halifax states :—" The Duncan, flag
ship of Admiral Sir James Hope, is alongside the
dockya rd, and will remain there all the winter until
she sail's for Bermuda in February, on her way to
England. The Wolverine came alongside also, and
was preparing to house in for the winter when she
suddenly received orders to sail next morning, her
destination being unknown. Her captain received
sealed orders, to be opened in a given latitude. I
hear that she went south, and some parcels intended
for her were sent to Port Royal, Jamaica. The
Niger was ordered south, but as the Wolverine was
sent away so unexpectedly she (Niger) is to remain
at Halifax for the winter, with the Cordelia and
Duncan."

The New York Tribune gives " The Case in a
Nut-shell." The Cincinnati Gazette has a corre-
spondent travelling in Arkansas, who writes that—
" Arkansas is not a desirable State at present ; but
25 years of freedom will put a new face on
the country, and investments of capital may now
be made here to fine advantage. Great numbers
of the old planters must sell, and others, disgusted
with freedom, are determined to get away. Planta-
tions of 500 to 5,000 acres are offered at low figures.
One man below Pine Bluff, late a private soldier in
the 15th Illinois Infantry, has made a handsome
fortune since the close of the war. He came South
without a dollar, and now owns 1,100 acres of the

finest Arkansas River bottom. He has produced
this year over 1,000 bales of cotton. He says he
has not found the slightest difficulty in procuring
all the labour he has needed. He has paid the freed-
men good wages, rewarded the first-class hands with
extra pay, paid promptly, and fed well. He says
that many planters are obliged to send every year
to distant places for hands, because they oppress
and defraud their labourers, who cannot, of course,
be induced to remain with them the second year."
We venture to say that there are a hundred thousand
experiences that corroborate this planter's,. and not
one that contradicts it. Good wages, good treat-
ment, good supervision, will secure labour in abun-
dance, white or black ; while those who grind the
faces of the poor will always find them unservice-
able. Just now labour is more plentiful than em-
ployment; and whoever can and will pay for work
can get it, North or South, black or white.
During the late war West Virginia contributed
15,376 native born and 1,692 foreign soldiers to
the National Army.

The papers of Northern Texas speak of the
emigrant trains constantly passing through the
country toward the interior of Texas. They are
said to be mostly Mississippians.
Fort Rawlings, just below Vicksburgh, is to be
demolished, by order of Gen. Grant. It took
2,000 men 60 days to erect the works.
On the recent rise in the Ohio river, 78 barges
and 47 boats, carrying 1,830,000 tons of coal,
passed down to Cincinnati.

The report of Adjutant-General Cowan, of Ohio,
shows that the State has furnished 310,000 troops,
of all arms and terms of service, during the war,
being 6,000 in excess of all calls, and that number
to her credit on the next war.

The Vermont Legislature has passed a bill, dis-
franchising utterly all deserters from the United
States army or navy during the war, or all who
voluntarily entered the rebel service. The bill
passed by a large majority.
Professor Marsh of Yale College pronounces the
fossils recently found at Cohoes, N.Y., the bones of
a female mastodon, of full growth, though compa-
ratively young, and says that the animal must have
existed over 10,000 years ago.
The office of the National Express, in Wheeling,
has been sold out for the benefit of the creditors.
The company has become totally insolvent. It was
a Southern concern, and its fate is typical of
Southern business in general.
A new island is forming in the Missouri River
opposite St. Joseph, and two citizens have built a
shanty on it in order to secure the first claim to
entry when the Government places it in the
market.

TILE GIIOIVTII OF NEW YORK.—At a meeting of
the New York Historical Society, the Rev. Dr.
Osgood of that city read a very interesting

paper showing the growth of the city since
the beginning of the present century. Some

of the more interesting items are as follows :
In 1801 the city contained about the same popu-
lation as• Providence, R. 1., and extended up
as far as Anthony-street. Taxes were then about
one-half of one per cent. on the valuation of the
property of the city. A genteel house could be

rented for $2OO per year, and a genteel family could
live on $750 per annum, when it now took them

$6,000 to $lO,OOO. The chief characteristic of New

York then, as now, was its business enterprise. In
literature it was behind Philadelphia and Boston, or
even Charleston, South Carolina. But it was busi-
ness that gave the city its empire and draws litera-
ture in it. train. New York owed to Robert Ful-
ton and De Witt Clinton more of its imperial posi-
tion than to men of science or letters. Who could

estimate what the steam-engine had done for civili-
sation and for the organisation of liberty on this
continent ? Old New York culminated in 1825 by
the completion of the Erie Canal. It now became
the mother of the nation—the national city. In a
quarter of a century more it became cosmopolitan,
European, and one of the principal cities of the
world. In 1801 the taxation amounted to $17,000 ;
now it amounts to $17,000,000. The city has now
50,000 dwellings. Her manufactured products
amounted in 1865 to $159,000,000, or nearly one-
eleventh of the entire manufactures of the country.
Her receipts from customs last year were over
$100,000,000. These facts show the imperial wealth
and power of New York. With the usual rate of
increase her population in 1900 will reach 4,000,000
souls. The speaker gave some statistics gathered
from the unpublished census of 1865, from which
it appears that there are in the city two and a half
regiments of boilermakers, four regiments of but-
chers, one and a half regiments of brokers, three
regiments of shoemakers, four and a half regiments
of eartmen, seventeen and a half regiments of clerks,
half a regiment of clergymen, nine and a half regi-
ments of dressmakers, one regiment of engineers,
three and a half regiments of laundresses, one and
,a
half regiments of lawyers, one regiment of grocers,
six regiments of merchants, three regiments of me-
chanics, one regiment of musicians, one and a half
regiments of physicians, 33 regiments of servants,
10 regiments of tailors, one regiment of ship car-
penters, &c., and 100,000 school children.
IMPORTANT DECISION CONCERNING INCOMES.—
AN INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT FOR FARMERS.—
Judge Guiles, in the United States circuit court at
Baltimore, delivered the following important deci-
sion in the case of Oden Bowie against G. W. Sands,
t n
formerly collector of internal revenue in that city :
Tfacts66an
and 1864,
thispad casethe showseeehe x
that
the he splaintiff,
a t t
on the products of his farm for
in of
18the year 1865 and
1863, although said productions remained unsold ;
that said products were sold in 1866, and that the
assessors in 1865 included the proceeds of said sale
with the income of the plaintiff for the year 1864,
and the collector required him to pay the income
tax on the same, which the plaintiff did under pro-
test ; that in estimating the plaintiff's income for
the year 1864, the assessor included in said income
the value of the agricultural products consumed by
the plaintiff's family in said year. I am of opinion
that, in the first question, the collector was wrong ;
that the tax on income authorised to be levied and
collected by the Act passed March 3, 1865, was only
upon the products of the plaintiff's farm for the
year ending on the 31st of December, 1864, and
for such of those products of that year only as should
be sold or used by the plaintiff during that year,
and did not authorise a tax on the products of the
plaintiff's farm for any previous years unsold and on
hand at the close of those years, and so too in 1864.
Upon the second question I think the collec-
tor was right. The tax imposed by the Act of
1864, as by the previous acts, was a tax on the
gross receipts or gains of a man during the preced-
ing year, and no deductions are to be made, except
those specially authorised in said act. I construe
the 117 section in connection with the 116, as if it
read, 'All other vegetables or other production,

being the growth of produce of the estate of such
!person sold, not including any part thereof unsold
and on hand during the year next preceding the 31st
December, until the same shall be sold,' and con-
strue the word ' or' as ' and,' to further the evident
intention of Congress, and to fully carry into effect
the provision of the 116th section. I, therefore,
direct judgment to be entered for the plaintiff for
the sum of $2,013, with interest from October 19,
1865, and costs." The cases of the other parties,
ten or eleven in number, instituting like proceedings,
were deferred until Saturday next, at which time
I it is expected that the counsel on both sides will
make known their intention, whether to abide the
above decision, or take an appeal to the supreme
court. The decision is regarded as one of much
importance, and if the internal revenue bureau agrees
with the court in its interpretation of the Act, and
does not appeal to the supreme court, it will neces-
sarily require the return to a considerable number
of persons of a large amount of money, which they
have paid for taxes on their incomes.
MUZZLE LOADERS, BREECH-LOADERS, AND RE-
PEATERS.--Assuming that a muzzle-loading gun can
be loaded and fired in sixty seconds, fifty-nine se-
conds of that time are required to load. Theproblem
then is how to save this lost fifty-nine seconds of
time out of the sixty. Obviously by reducing the
number of motions. If a muzzle-loading gun take
sixty motions or the equivalent to load it, then a
gun that has twelve motions can be loaded five

times as fast, and will reduce the lost time to eleven

seconds, or one that requires but six motions can be
loaded ten times as fast, and so on. Hence it is

evident to judge of the value of any gun is simply
to know the number of motions required to load it.
Let us illustrate this. The celebrated Prussian
needle-gun requires twelve motions to load it, and
can be loaded and fired five times in a minute,
which reduces the time lost from fifty-nine to eleven
seconds. The best American single breech-loaders
are operated in six motions, and can be loaded and
fired ten times in a minute, thus reducing the
lost time to five seconds. The best American maga-
zine or repeating guns are operated in two motions,
and can be loaded and fired thirty times in a minute,
thus reducing the time lost in loading from fifty-
nine to one second. In other words a Prussian
needle-gun is five times as effective as a muzzle-
loader, the best American single loaders are ten
times as effective, and the best American repeater is
thirty times as effective ; or again, a repeating arm
is six times as efficient as a Prussian needle-gun and
three times as efficient as the best single breech-
loaders. Another advantage that repeaters possess
is that in an emergency, when suddenly attacked
by an overwhelming force, they may be used
to the extent of the charges in the magazine (fifteen,
more or less) at the rate of sixty shots per minute.
—New York Evening Post.
The Ohio Penitentiary has now 882 convicts
confined within its walls, being 150 more tban this
time last year. There has been a steady increase in
the number of inmates of the institution since the
close of the war.

AMERICAN NEGRO SOLDIERS.-It appears that
the War Department have ascertained that there
have been 169,624 coloured men enlisted in the
United States' service. Of these 20,236 have been
discharged, principally on account of physical disa-
bility; 31,866 died while in the service ; 14,887 de-
serted ; 1,514 have been killed in action, and 1,344
were reported after engagements as missing. —New
York: 7imes.

Freemasonry was introduced into America in
1730.

The Lynchburg and Danville Railroad Company
has been organised by electing Colonel W. S. Black-
ford chief engineer, and E. S. Hallet treasurer.
The Navy Register for 1867 will show that of six
hundred vessels in the navy at the close of the war
there are now but 294, mounting 2,563 guns.
Beds of verd antique have been discovered in
Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
The well-known yacht Young America has been
sold to a Savannah man for a pilot boat.
The use of a wire tiller-rope is stated to be the
principal reason why there was not a terrible loss of
life in the recent burning of the steamer Von Phul,
on the lower Mississippi. The usual tiller-rope
would soon have been burned off, and the boat have
become unmanageable.
The city authorities of Boston have accepted the
design of Mr. Billings for a monument to be erected
in that city to the memory of the soldiers of the
city who lost their lives in the war. It will be an
obelisk 120 feet high, built of Concord granite, sur-
mounted by an appropriate figure, and placed on
Flagstaff -hill.
. The Catholic Bishop of Savannah recommends
the foundation of schools for the education of
priests for the freedmen.

There are 336,616 white males of full age in

Indiana.

A whale, sixty feet in length, was recently washed
ashore at Rockaway Beach.

From the official records it appears that during
the war 45,000 Federal prisoners died in the South,
and 26,436 Confederate prisoners died in the North.
A man having died of delirium tremens in Lewis-
burg, Ohio, his wife brought suit against the two
persons who had sold him the liquor, and recovered
damages.

revenue, the tariff, &c., have hardly been touched
upon as yet, though somebody has tried we believe to
introduce a bill repealing the 5 per cent. tax on manu-
factures, and to reduce the tax on some other in-
terests. But it is just as well to wait for the report
of the special commissioner on these subjects, Mr.
David A. Wells, which will be ready about the
middle of the month, and if his suggestions are fol-
lowed Congress will be much more likely to go
right than if it should attempt to legislate for all
the different interests that will besiege it. The
appointment thus early, however, of a committee on
the part of the House to investigate internal reve-
nue frauds, especially in regard to distilled spirits,
cigars, and tobacco, is a move in the right direction.
Several new Senators were present and took their
seats on Monday, among them Messrs. Cattell and
Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, the former recently
elected and the latter appointed by the Gover-
nor, and George IL Fogg of New Hamp-
shire, appointed to fill the vacancy occasioned
by the resignation of Mr. Clark. Mr. Johnson
of Maryland attempted to offer the credentials of
the two Senators elect from Texas, but they were
promptly ordered to lay on the table. General J.
M. Thayer and T. W. Tipton, Senators elect from
Nebraska, have arrived, bringing the new State
Constitution, and the question of admitting Ne-
braska as a State will speedily come up. In the
arrangement of the Senate committees, Messrs.
Doolittle, Cowan, Dixon, and Norton have been
placed at the foot of their respective committees,
and Cowan is struck off from the finance committee
entirely, and the place given to Cattell of New
Jersey. Very naturally these gentlemen feel their
degradation, but they have the comforting assuri
ance that they brought it upon themselves. Three
members of the house elect from Tennessee, who
were not present at the last session, are on hand
now, Samuel M. Arnell, James T. Campbell, and
Isaac R. Hawkins. Mr. Arnell is the only Repub-
lican among them, and his seat is contested by Mr.
Cooper.—Spring field Republican.