The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1868-07-17

The purchase of Alaska seems to have
been at last achieved by the necessary votes
OF the House of Representatives. We must
drive home our elephant and make what pro-
vision we can for his shelter and board This
new lot of ours is not saleable for house lots,
nor need we be in a hurry TO open a land Of
flee where settlers can rush to obtain the first
choice of homestead. Joshua Fulalove,
always ready for tradei buying Juan Fer
nandez for the bones of a Spanish great gal
leon stranded upon it with its old ribs crusted
with corroded silver, dickering for St. Helena
to sell again to Louis Napoleon, negotiating
for earthquakes and yellow fever sites in the
West Indies, has at last got stuck This Rus
sian iceberg is cold scald. Nobody will take
it off his hands.
Joshua, the "tarnal critter," has always had
strange good luck with his trades. He bought
Louisiana of Napoleon, and it turned out
splendid grain farm big enough to feed the
world. He kind of bought and kind of stole
Texas. 1t has bred a terrible set of scoun-
drels, cut throats and rebels, but the land is
good and capable of feeding and enriching a
civilized race if those barbarians can be ever
suppressed and hanged. He bought Califor-
mia, Arizona and New Mexico, supposmg he
had got only an arid desert They turned
out to Ophir and Golconda in his lucky hands.
1t may turn out so now. Who knows him
would risk something on Josh's luck. But
our opinion is that he is sold; that for this
whistle he has given too much.
1t is not the 81 100000 that goes to this
purchase, though that is a costly outlay just
now, when there are such urgent necessities
for ecopomiziDg-bu it is the expensive sys-
tenn in which the administering of this out
lying and forbidding territory will involve us.
There is a quarter part of circle round
the globe that We must furnish with light
houses and along which we must extend the
eternal coast survey. There are forts to be
built, garrisons supplied and maintained
We must have custom houses along all the
coast, revenue cutters, the posse OF detectives,
and then whom can we trust? Would any
man doom himself to life in those horrd
regions of darkness, fogs and frosts, unless
he could earn steal fortune in five Years
For all this outlay what return shall we re-
ceive? What revenue will ever come back
to replace the purchase and this enormous
expenditure? Will we seize the wild ami
mails of those frigid wastes or the swarming
fish of those misty seas and levy royalty
upon them so much head to get back our
money? Even if gold is found there, as
H.
get one dollars revenue from it? No labor is
less productive than the digging of gold,
and it has been demonstrated that in
California there is no margin
of profit left which can bear levy of
even one per cent. Probably the digging of
coal. the quarrying of granite and of ice is
much more profitable than gold mining.
Then Alaska abounds in Indians to be
thinned off and exterminated with powder
and ball, with syphilis and whiskey, in the
approved civilized methods, and as they are
said to be intelligent, vigorous and warlike
the process will be all the slower and more
exhaustive to us.
The determination arrived at by this
House was doubtless controlled by the con
sideration that the treaty being ratified, the
government was pledged to pay the money
promised. Very well let us not get involved
again in any such bargain. Some check
ought to be imposed upon the treaty-mak-
ing power at least while Mr.. Seward is Sec
retary of State. No man in the country
has the least confidence in his Judgment
he ever had common sense, he lost it years
ago. He seems determined co show the
country, what ridiculous mistake it would
have made in making him President. As to
the expenditure of money he is utterly reck-
less, as to public opinion he is defiant. His
only thought seems TO be to astonish the
country with some new tatuity that shall
make the last seem even prudent. He fol-
lowed I'D the purchase of Alsaka with the
purchase of ST. Thomas for about the same
price, and it was gravely stated in debate in
Congress the other day, that he was actually
bargaining for Greenland and Iceland, and