The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1865-02-22

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pulpit has Illuminated it's thunders every
Sunday Of the year, and the press every
day of the week. But the most eloquent
sermon on extortion might as well be
preached to the waves Of the sea, and
the most scathing pens are as powerless
to arrest the course of spectators as the
pinions from which they were plucked
to change the course of the winds. We
have heard of reformed gamblers, re-
formed drunkards, and reformed trans
gressors Of various kinds, but
reformed speculator is a prodigy that
has not been brought to light in this or
any other day and generation. Rev.
Sidney Smith, having fallen off good
deal at one time, advertised for twenty
five pounds of missing or lost clergyman
There is good deal more than that
missing from many Confederate soldiers
and citizens, but no need of advertising.
1t can readily be found on the fat spccu-
lators, who have gained as much as their
countrymen have lost; who have alb
sorbcd all the rich juices of the land
lean and hungry kline before the war,
who have since devoured all the fat and
we'll liking; thin and blasted ears that
have swallowed a thriving harvest. And
they think they have done we'll. Per-
haps they have. But if good name be
of any account if it matters aught to a
mans descendants what was the charac~
ter and conduct of their forcfather in
such struggle as this, then the men
who have grown rich while their coun-
try grew poor-who have swollen their
carcases by sucking out the life blood Of
! their native land-have not done we'll.
All other objects in nature have their
uses; the trees of the field, and even
the winter ice-not as cold as an cxtor.
toner's nature; but we can conceive no
use for spectators, except to fattcn the
worms with their gross flesh, and 70 use
their hearts as bomb-proof coverings for
magazines, or sheathipgs for vessels, ca
pable Of resisting eleven-inch she'll
| They would not only take the oath Of
allegiance to the Yankees-for it would
be mere matter Of ceremony they
who do the cnemy's work could have no
objection to bearing his namc-but to
the Father of Evil himself, if he felt dis
posed to insist upon mere form. a
great deal Of sympathy has been ex-
pressed for some Confederate communi-
ties which have fallen within the Yam
kee lines. Some of them deserve that
sympathy, but there are others in which
the spectators and extortioncrs COM
pose so large an element that the true
| objects of compassion are the Yankees.
We greatly underrate the supply of
native~born talent when we suppose that
all the Yankee shark has to d. is to
open his jaws and engulf simple-minded
Confederates. The case and plenty
which once distinguished the South
may have retarded the development of
this kind of talent, but it needs only
the spur of such times as these to prove
that the land is capable of great things
in every department of human enter
prise. We should like to have the OPT
Mon Of Captain Simon Suggs on that
subject. When the Captain found that
he had not a single piece Of bacon left,
he simply observed that somebody's
! meat-house had got to suffer, and it was
not long before he became converted at a
camp meeting, and took up collection
for the building Of meeting house in
his neighborhood. Suggs and his family
are, at present, We believe, acting with
very conspicuous energy at various
points of the Confederacy in the promo
ton of their private 9 interests at the ma
tional expense; using the public money
for speculation lending the public money
to their friends for some financial ope-
ration of which they arc to share the
profits delaying Government freight in
order to forward their own; even con-
niving at the false marking and direction
of freight for bribesr so that sometimes
the Confederate armies are left without
a ration of meat, in order that Suggs d
Go. may turn an honest penny. Now,