New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1856-05-19

but We cannot ignore the power ITSELF To do it is
to open the door to legalization and impunity for
all forms Of vice and deprayity within the Federal
| Territories. Those Territories exist, not for the
sole benefit of that small fraction of the American
People already located upon them but for that also
Of the vast majority who may choose at any time
| to remove to one or another of them; and the
"needful rules and regulations from time 10 time
enacted by Congress must respect this truth.
The full affidavits, statements and reports re-
specting the Panama riot, which we have already
laid before our readers add another to the multi.
tude of proofs already in existence of the folly and
danger of the practice of carrying deadly weapons
There is nothing in the testimony that gives any
color to the suggestion that the attack on the rail-
road passengers was preconcerted affair with the
intention Of robbery. No doubt there presxisted
degree of ill.will between the parties-quite as
strong however, we suspect on the part of the pas
seDgers as on the part of the natves-which gave
additional vigor to the fight but it began, like so
many other Bloody riots from an accidental quar-
rel between two individuals. Probably it
would have ended in mere game OF
Of sticuff between the drunken passenger who gave
the first provocatOn and the native huckster whom
he attempted to cheat, had it not unfortunately
happened that this drunken passenger was armed
with pistol the discharge Of which was the direct
cause of all the blood that was afterward she'd
Even the discharge of this pistol, however, would
have been attended with no very serious conse-
quence, except perhaps to the drunken individual
who shot it of, had not many other of the passen-
gers also been armed, and employed these arms in
the general fight that resulted from the first COL
lisiOn.
Nobody who reads the Il testimony with the least
care and candOr can doubt for moment that the
attacks made upon the hotels and the railroad
station from which most of the casualties resulted
were drawn upon those buildings by shots fired
from them. Mr.. MLane, the agent of the Steam
ship Company naturally tries to reduce these sort of
provocations to minimum; yet, even If the case
rested entirely upon his testimony, the fact is estab
lished that armed passengers did fire from time to
time from those buildings, Of which the inevitable
consequence was to render them objects OF attack.
To the shot Of the drunken passenger the natives
standing by responded by using their knives, and
the cutasses which, in thoseropical countries, are
an ordinary farming tool, but principally BY stones
They had no firearms at first and it does not ap.
pear that any considerable number of the mob were
armed in that way at all. The larger part Of the
damage done by firearms resulted from the firing of
the police on the railroad station to which shall
presently refer. The firearms principally used at
the commencement of the ARRAY were undoubtedly
those in the hands of the passengers. Indeed it is
only surprising that some serious collision has not
before now resulted from letting loose every week
in the streets of Panama large bands Of armed
strangers some of them drunk, and large part Of
them pulled up with an insOlent cOnceit to their
own superiority as compared with the natives.
The riot having thus begun, news was brought
to the police that the foreigners had fortified
Themselves In the railroad station and the neighbor
ing houses, and were firing on the natives-whicb,
as to the fact of firing, was unquestionaby true.
The armed police, fourteen in number, started for
the spot, and a. they approached the railroad
station were themselves fred upon from the
station house, and some of their party wounded,
which was the occasion of their firing upon that
building, resulting in the loss Of several lives.
That the authorities of Panama exerted them
selves in good faith to put stop to the riot and to
save the passengers, is not only evident from the
statement given by Mr.. MLane himself, which by
no means supports the conclusion he undertakes to
base upon it, but from the result; for if the au-
thorities had connived at the mob there was moth.
ing to prevent them from destroying the station.
house and numbering the greater part of the pass
eDgers. On the whole, we doubt much whether
similar riot occurring among ourselves would have
been more efectually quelled. We have had,
within year past, too many bloody riots in the
United States, of which antpathy to foreigners
was the impulse, to be in q position to hold the
PaDsma mob to very rigorous account
In future, we hope the Railroad Company will be
cautious how it suffers armed and drunken passen-
gers to wander through the streets Of Panama, In
sultDg the natives and provoking quarrels. part
of the passengers by that route are persons whose
sense ofustice and propriety cannot be implicitly
relied upon.