The daily Mississippi clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1866-1866, 1866-05-10

GEThe province Of Southern
editor is somewhat circumscribed.
We can select and arrange for the in
formation Of our readers, the news
which the mails and the telegraph
bring us, and we can watch over, and
to the best of our Judgment and abil-
ity foster the home interests and dis
cuss the home policy of the State;
and there, for all present useful pur-
poses, our business stops. Whatever
lucubrations we may indulge in con-
corning national politics are of no
avail either to shape the policy of our
people or to influence the course of
their rulers, and must be considered
only as esthetical exercises or at the
furthest as practice lessons by way
of keeping our hands in. For at
present neither have our people
voice in the government nor do their
wishes or interests stand the least
chance of being regarded by the party
in power. For any use that it would
subserve, we might as well write
about European rs American pol
tiles; and, indeed, weary and dis
gusted with what is going on at Wash
ington, we are fain, for relief, to cast
glance across the Atlantic and see
if there is not there something to in
terest us and distract the mind from
unpleasant and Improbable themes.
In truth we find European affairs
at present growing extremely inter
esting, aud there is something in the
condition of things which strongly
reminds us of the situation thirteen
years ago. Then, as now, the atmos-
phere was filed with rumors of APP
preaching war, and heads and pens
everywhere we're busted with spec
ulations as to the probable result.
The general opinion, we recollect, in
clined to the belief that peace would
be preserved. The memory of the
wars Of Napoleon the First was too
fresh in the minds of people and
statesmen not to lead them to depre-
cate disturbance Of the gnneral re
pose, and we believed then, and we
still believe, that all the statesmen of
Europe were sincerely in earnest in
endeavoring to avert a war; but we
did not think they would succeed. AL
most every arrival from Europe
brought the report, in stereotyped
phrase, sit is not believed that there
will be any war;" and yet the great
powers were drifting hopelessly into
the vortex of hostilities. Nor, when
the war at last commenced, did we be
heve that it would soon end; nor did
we regard the peace, which was in a
short time patched up, as anything but
a truce.
And such it has proved. When the
confagration was stamped out III one
place, it broke out in another, until, at
last, everything seemed quiet
seemed so to all eyes save those of
the far-seeing ruler of France. He
found it impossible to persuade his
fellow-soyereigns and their advisers
of the necessity for Il general congress
and hardly was this project of his re-
luctantly abandoned, when an explo-
sion took place in an obscure corner
Of the continent
That spent itself; Denmark was hu
inflated and dismembered, and words
of peace again reached the genera
ear-nothing but words. The EN-
bers still smouldered, and now the7
are all aglow. A renewal of war il
imminent-we might say inevitable
Still the same pacific intelligence a
in 1858 is repeated almost every week
but the former lesson has rather sha
ken the confidence of the sooth- sayers
and their predictions are less conf
dent than they were. Yet, they en-
deavor, with all the firmness Of utter
ance they can command, to pronounc
assurances of a peaceful settlement o
difficulties, but hardly have these as
Surances reached us when another ar
rival brings news Of fresh compiled
tions, or rather that the parties ar
still helplessly entangled in the oil
ones.
We fully believe that we shall 500
enjoy the luxury, if it may be so cor
sidered, of the grandest kind of wa
viewed from a considerably more dis
tant point of view than that which W
have lately witnessed.