The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1858-07-13
FOREIGN.
THE MAILS OF THE CITY OF WASH
INGTON.
AsIATICs, AFRICANS, AND AMERICANS
[From the London Times Of the 25m.l


performed. We know what our primary duties are;
they admit of no parley and no procrastination.-
But we cannot walk the streets of this metropolis
without seeing obligations which distract us by
their multitude. Had we been all earnest and ac-
tive might have provided labor for the class
whence comes that poor bedizened creature who
leers at us in the thronged thoroughare. The seats
in the parks, provided for the rest of those who
walk to recreate are monopolized by the houseless
and wretched; they linger there by day, and they
sleep in these summer nghts,-in the winter they
must huddle and shiver elsewhere. We might do
something to remedy this.
The Registrar-General tells us that our neighbors
are dying around us in unusual numbers, and we
have been weakly allowing silly people to chatter
and noisy engineers to fight while we ought to have
pressed on the work. We take up the day labor
sheet in any large mandatory, and find half the
signatures crosses. 1t is our fault that these
men have not the full use of their faculties that
they are dumb and deaf to absent friends and blind
to the distant monitor. We enter a court of law,
and some such this is going on ''Does
that little boy know the nature of an oath Ex-
anime him, Mr.. Associate "LittIc bow where do
bad people go when they die? ?" "To He'll please
SIR. "Ihats right good boy; swear him, crier."
Perhaps we finish walk by turning into Exeter
Hall, where we hear that the Divine wrath is
klndled against us nation because we have not
converted the Ashantees to Christianity; or into
the House of Lords where find an eloquent Peer
demonstrating that fleets and armies should 90
forth and compel all the world to put away
| slavery
The attempt to discharge one of the least impera-
tive of these secondary duties has cost us more
money and more English lives than the whole of
! the Crlmean war. The sailors who had succumbed
TO levers on the Coast OF Africa would have manned
channel fleet; the money spent upon that African
| squadron would have built two channel fleets We
have been brought almost into conflict with Amer
lea, and we have exchanged sharp words with
France. Our reward has been signal i'll success
and general declaration from the whole world
that our interference has been insoence and our
motives entirely selfish. We may wrap ourselves
up In our virtue and national concet but it is
true that have failed it is true that we have on
y aggravated the evil it is true that we have given
an unnatural relative Importance to this secondary
duty it is true that we have pursued it to the ne
gect of others more practicable and more imnera-
tive.
1t seems to be true that we are about in reckless
despair at our failure to sacrifice primary duties to
what has almost taken the form of mania, and to
| 40 great wrong in the hope that may obtain n
! little good. In some remarks upon this subject
yesterday spoke generally of the position of the
British possessions within the tropics with reference
| to Asatc and African labor The subject is too
important to be left entirely in the hands of those
who are fanatical on the subject of the blacks, and
we wish to ortity those observations by reference
10 particular colony. Let us take Mauritius. 1t
Is the finest island in the world. Alexander Dumas
| who upon this occasion has some knowledge of what
! he writes about, has described it so wildly that
the French people think of it lost paradise.
IL mas an interesting population, for there
! upon a small SCALE several problems which at all
| times have troubled the world gradually working
! themselves out. The old race of slaves and their
thoroughbred black children and grandchildren
are nearly extinct. Every cholera smallpox
! epidemic sweeps them off by scores. The muattoes
thrive, and are increasing in number, wealth, and
| Importance but they rather faction than
population. They trade in the towns; they do
not work in the fields. They are in nearly every
case the offspring of iegitimate passion and they
hate the white arstocracy with hatred that is
repaid by contempt mulatto jury will acaut
a mulatto if he be clearly guilty of murder, rape,
md NInita nl IL, 4
lenge any mulatto on jury which was to decide his
fate.
But neither of these two hostile populations can
ever cultivate this island. For labor the planter
must depend upon importation. scarcity of la
Dor is the normal state of Mauritius. The rent of
houses is three times the amount of house rent in
England, because there are no builders. For want
| OF hands they cultivate nothing but sugar, and
therefore import every other necessary from abroad
even beef and mutton. Even when sugar is at high
| prices the planters profits not to be measured
by quotations. The positions of master and man
are reversed. Bribing laborers and paying 'crimps
absorb the profits. The Indians are petted and
coaXed and bribed to work. Fortunately they are
OF low CASTE and, meeting from every part of In
! dia, and being mixed with Chinese and Europeans
and hybrid races they soon lose all caste and re-
glous preJudlces. In the nsta of marriage
their children lose even their language and adopt
the creole French. They are easy to govern, are
good agricultural laborers, and are well behaved
quiet citizens; but there are not enough of them
and there is no succession.
They leave the cane fields as soon as they havo
gained little money, and engage in small branch
! es OF commerce having made little more money
! thus they go back to their country; for there
are but few women of their own race to tempt them
to stay Thus the planters are supplied with Just
sufficient labor to enable them to sparsey cultivate
some portions of the island; the bulk of the island
is waste and Jungle but the labor market is kept so
! high, that every laborer going out is certain to
make a fortune. There are some intellects so
| thoroughly twisted by this morbid "meanthro-
ply that they probably regard this state ofhngs
with secret pleasure. Meanwhile, Cuba reoices
The dear labor that is forced upon free colonies
is weight in the race of ofcompetition.
1t enables the Cuban planter to pay high prices
for African slaves and hold out incentives to the
risk of an illicit cargo. Thus the negro undergoes
the middle passage in order that certain Hindoos
may enjoy protected monopoly of the labor mar
| ket at Mauritus. Unwise in our generation we
weigh one scale while are tightening the other
Add TO TINS the injustice committed upon those In
dams and Cinnamon who are kept from his high
mart OF labor and we see how foolish have been the
! doings of our impractical philanthropists
The true policy, if you would compete with Gu
ba slavery, is not to seek for grievances and make
complaints that the colored races of mankind are
! subject to the common lot of laboring humanity,
but to people the islands of the torrid zone with
Asatcs and Africans laboring in freedom. Instead
| OF crying-"Stop the transport of laborers," the
cry of the philanthropists should be-Strain every
nerve to increase that transport and to render it
effective. Do not create impediments and call them
regulations do not regard with hostility the efforts
| OF the colored races to compete in freedom with
their compatrots in slavery; do not invent oppro-
brious nicknames for conditions of labor which are
more easy than those proposed to your soldiers
| and less enduring than those imposed upon your
| own middle class countrymen proceeding to India.
! Work with the men who have pecuniary inter-
est in putting down slavery; aid them in competing
! with the Spaniards and Americans, who buy and
! sell and traffic in mankind; be reasonable enough
to admit that Chinaman HindOo must be
pressed by the same necessities to labor which CO.
| cree your own white countrymen; and acknowledge
that the lot even of African cannot be to luxuri
ate in paradise of unearned plenty. Fence them
round with all necessary securities against the Gu
! pidity of bad men; give them greater securities
than you gave to the Irish when they crowded your
unhealthy ships, fleeing from famine; but do not
wall up this stream of hungry emiprants do not
kill these black men with your Judged Kindness
or sacrifice great Imperial interest to false and
maudlin sentiment. Mere vituperative defamation
is an easy, popular, and useless thing; instead
| Of this, men who would be useful to their kind
should help us in council, and should aid to dis
cover how that which must be done may be well
and safely done.
THE FIRE DEPARTMENT OF PARIS.
letter from Paris in the New York Times de-
scribes the fire department in that capital as fol-
| lows
The fire department of Paris, like the police is
military organization, and consists of 900 men,
| Its members drawn from the army and are
under the control of the Minister of War, except
! when on duty as tiremen, when they obey the Or
ders of the Prefect of Police. They are picked and
consequently efficient men, and are carefully
drilled and trained in gymnastic exercises They
are enrolled for the same number of years as sol
diers in the army and cost the treasury annually
! 100000 francs-a little 500, 200. They wear
uniform, blue cashmere jacket, buttoned up to the
throat, pantaoons of the same stuff, made large.
and brass cap. They have strong leather strap
around their bodies, in which there is ring, and
by which they can be suspended. Their principal
arm is fire But their engines are mere
| syringes, and their hose company nm.
| T1sE n,,oI, onl,,
thro0 water. They must be supplied by buckets.
On occasion of the recent destruction by fire of the
buildings called Grand Conde, lines were formed in
all directions, into which the policemen pressed
men, women and children for the passage of buck
cts. Barrels wheels also put in requisition,
but not single hose. The river was only two hose