The Sun. — 1868-08-18 (London, England)

GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN ON WHISKY.—Georgo Francis Train withdraws from the canvass as a candidate for territorial delegate to. Congress from Nebraska, for reasons which are thus set forth :  .....__ _ " I am told to-day that money is wanted for carriages to bring up the voters, and to scatter among the beer shops and groggeries. Any spare money I have, or may have, I prefer to devote to education and Christian charities. Purchasing vates debases the franchise and demoralizes the people. I. have lectured too often for the Irish Father Mathew Societies to go back on them by treating the voters. No wife or little children shall have reason to complain of a drunken husband or father on election day on my account. Whisky is the curse of our time. It is ruining our young men, and hurrying our old men into the grave. Rich and poor, high and low, alike are being destroyed under its blighting influence. When we have fewer breweries, fewer distilleries, and more Christian churches, more universities, and more schools, the law courts, the gaols will be lass patronized, and the world would bo better for it. (Extract of a letter from the Editor of the Revolution.) New York, July 25, 1868. _ _  Geo. Francis Train, Esq. My dear Sir,— * * * * The intensely hot weather, the depression in.business, the droning, do-nothing course of Congress, and the endless screeches of a Presidential election make times rather dull with us ; at least I overhear that from our counting-room, into which I seldom have occasion to enter. The Presidential contest is to be fierce. Both sides are full of confidence ; the sporting men telling of the many hats, and ;large sums they are ready to stake on both sides. For my part, had I the club of Hercules, I would smash them both into pumice, never again to be restored. We are calling for a new party, 3 people's party, or some kind of party that shall at least jeopard both, if not defeat them. But there is no leader, uo chi halo. Our Rome has lost the breed of noble blood, or never had it, and so every attempt at third-party operation fails. We know why Grant was nominated, but Seymour is a mystery, and Blair more so. We can get as good as they, but they would have no prestige, at least of the right kind, and nothing could be done with them. And, besides, we cannot harmonize between North :and South. The People's Weekly is all able journal, published in Washington and Baltimore, but full of negro hatred, and every way behind the nineteenth century. It would win the South and West by the rebel claim—or against " negro supremacy," and long and learned disquisitions in support of negro slavery, and terrible denunciations of John Brown and the Garrisonian school of abolitionists. But the North, where most strength and virtue are, will not brook such nonsense, and so much harmony seems out of the question. And then the "Weman question" will be a still more disturbing element; and so prejudice, not principle, proscription, not justice and equality, will, I fear, hold sway for years yet to come' We appear to need a new Messiah able to take up the nation by the four corners, and shake the dust of dark ages out of it, and spread it out anew. But whence shall We look for his coming ? or for even his John the Baptist heralding his approach ? The country is in great comnietion. Strikes among workmen more extensive than even before; robberies, burglaries, suicides, and assassinations; railroad and steamboat disasters unprecedented, and gene" rally through most wanton carelessness ; Washington t den of forty times forty thieves, its weakness for goo 3 only paralleled by its omnipotence for wickedness ;_ CO" gross disgracing itself every hour it sits, and yet not daring to adjourn and go home through fear of Andrew Johnson; pulpit, the deadest, dumbest dog of all the kennel ; if this be not an alembic out of which to distil the millennium' then it cannot always be true that one extreme follows another. We keep the revolution bell ringing and el whistle blowing as well as we can in the midst the darkness. In the threatened deluge, if all else geel under, we hope at least that it shall find its Afoulld. Ararat, and save the seed corn for a new wor, Pardon the haste with which I write. The news yoi get daily per under the ocean, and weekly over it, se need not waste time on its tedious recitals. With kinde; regards, and remain yours in bonds as bound with you, am, very truly yours,