Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-12-10


Our Government has appreciated the inn
po,tance Of uniform standard Of weights
and measures, uniform unit of currency,
and a uniform mode of preparing and keep
ing commercial statistics. Secretary Cobb
had impressed it upon Congress several
times. With a view to this, Congress
authorized the appointment Of delegate to
the International Statistical Congress, at
London, last summer.
Secretary Cobb tells Congress that all his
brilliant expectations from this were dis
appointed,
The Hon. A. B. Longstreet, of South
Carolina, was sent to represent the United
States in this international assembly. But
when he got there he found that Inter
national Congresses included all colors. A
negro delegate came between the wind and
his nobility; and whatwa worse, the negro
attracted the most notice. Whereupon, the
Hon. A. B. Longstreet seeded, like true
South Carolinian, and returned home to re-
port his wrongs, and the insult to his nation
in his person, and to heal his outraged honor
with the comfortable pay which, "even in
the very tempest of his passion he did not
forget to draw in full.
As yet Secretary Cobb only reports the
failure to Congress- and forwards Mr.. Long
streets report, and states that his with
drawal "received the entire approval Of his
Government" And we are expected, it
seems, to sit down quietly under this national
insult-thiS blot upon the Stripes and Stars.
Why does not the Administration defy the
world in arms for this international worlds
insult? Or five are not to do it, let South
Carolina 60 in and do it alone. That would
be job just suited to her pretensions.
But, unfortunately, this is not the darkest
shade on our national escutcheon. At the
British and French Courts, the ebony Minis
ter from HNyti is received on equal terms
with the American Ministers At the Tuile-
ries, the Haytien Minister speaks the Ian
Guage and understands the usages OF the
Court, in both of which our Ministers have
usually been lamentably deficient; conse-
quently, they regard Haytien civilization as
quite superior TO that of the United States.
If it is an international insult to have q
black man sitting in a Congress of all nations,
with our delegate, what must it be to have
our foreign Ministers mingling socially with
the black Minister from Hayti at the Courts
of st. James and st. Cloud?
1t shows the nice scent of our national
honor that our international delegate gave
up valuable purpose and abandoned
his mission-all except his pay-just about
the time our national enthusiasm and affec-
tion and money were so profusely lavished
upon the inferior colored specimens from
Japan, who were probably several shades
darker than the colored international insult,
and far less cleanly.
Our national olfactories are too sensitive
to be exposed by mingling with the outer
world. The snuffs which our foreign Minis
ters are constantly compelled to inhale,
would hardly be believed. Mr.. Flourney in
France, has to endure things that in Vir-
ginia would make chivalrous blood boil
over. And Mr.. Dallas has become so accus-
toned to it. that he is said to greet the Hay
tien Minister rather more cordially than any
of the rest. Let us call home our diplo-
matists--by courtesy so called, because they
know nothing of diplomacy-prohibit our
ships from trading with any people who
have any "visible admixture," put up a
Chinese wall, to fence us in from all contami-
nation, and sit down in the ashes like Job,
with bottle of the most pungent salts to
each nostril, to preserve our nose from in