New York times.
We have never seen anything more exquisitely cool and refreshing than the impudence of the New York
Times.
Considering the audacity of his propositions and the insignificance of the creature who makes them, the
Times on the war makes the coolest and most delightful summer reading to be had this side the North Pole.
The furious little manikin has a truculent article lately on the ‘"Confiscation of Rebel Estates,"’ and we cannot deny our readers the luxury of a few extracts.
After remarking, what we think is very probable, and will become a general thing before long, that the ‘"Northern people are sometimes startled by the vast amount of money needed, and insidious traitors among us intrude the inquiry; Is the reduction of the
Southern hostility to the
Government really, worth the immense sum that will be required?"’ the
Times thus spreads its majestic pinions and bears the country aloft;
At this time, therefore, it may be encouraging to the country to be reminded that by the law and usage of nations it is entirely legitimate to make the property of the citizens of the rebel States, whose wickedness has provoked this war, pay the whole debt incurred by the Nation in restoring the supremacy of the
Constitution and laws.
That it will be just to inflict a penalty on treason, no one can deny; and the country will demand the recognition of this principle, partially, if not to its full extent, by a special impost on the property of those traitors who have plunged the
Government into its present enormous outlays.
The debts incurred by the
Confederate States for the support of their conspiracy and revolt are clearly without law and void, and will be so treated by all National Courts.--They will not, therefore, be a charge upon the property of the people of the seceded States when the
Union is restore, or rather when the
National jurisdiction over them is resumed.
It will be within the ability, then, of the disloyal States to make up to the
National Government the losses they have occasioned it; and the very revenues they have devised — the export duty on cotton, and the direct taxes they will lay — may be properly diverted by the National Congress from the support of treason to the extinguishment of the
Nation's war debt.
The export duty on cotton will thus become a permanent regulation of American commerce; and as the
English people, who are its chief purchasers, have no fault to find with the imposition of this duty by the rebels themselves, it is not to be supposed that they will complain if it is adopted and continued as a settled policy of the
National Government.
It would not be at all amiss for the
National Government, in the exercise of its rightful power, to confiscate the property of rebels, to lay a special tax on that species of property in the seceded States that has, more than any other, been the cause of the present civil war. The rebellion was nominally inaugurated for the protection of slave property.
It has practically destroyed it. The only safety of slave property now lies in the restoration of the
Constitution and the
Union--It is most fit, therefore, that the property that has caused the rebellion should be specially taxed to pay the expense it has occasioned.
And it can well afford to do so in view of the fact that the money now expending by the Nation is the absolute salvation of the property in question.
Mr. Secretary Chase very properly presents this whole subject to the consideration of Congress, in his admirable report on the Treasury.
He says that ‘"the property of those engaged in insurrection, or in giving aid and comfort to the insurgents, may properly be made to contribute to the expenditure made necessary by their criminal misconduct.
As a part of the punishment due to the guilt of involving the Nation in the calamities of civil war, and thereby bringing distress upon so many innocent citizens, Congress may justly provide for the forfeiture of the whole or a part of the estates of offenders, and for the payment of the proceeds into the public treasury"’
It is obviously the policy to confiscate only a part, and not the whole, of the estates of the masses of the people found in arms against the
Government.
The object is not to crush the industry of the
South, but to punish.
The leaders, to be sure, should have nothing left to them — perhaps not even their mischievous lives; but the more innocent people, who have been deceived into a participation of their crimes, may be spared to repent, and redeem the country, by honest industry, from the debt they have brought upon it.
We hope Congress will not hesitate to pass suitable laws at once embodying the principles herein embraced.
It will strengthen the loans proposed by the
Government, to have it assured that they will rest upon the pledged wealth of the entire Union--of thirty-four States, and thirty millions of people.
And it will greatly cheer the loyal States and their citizens to know, by the enacted laws and resolves of the American Congress, that the whole debt of $400,000,000, now to be incurred by the
Government to suppress treason, can and will be drawn ultimately, every dollar of it, from the property and industry of those whose wicked acts have made the expenditure necessary.
If the ‘"little villain"’ of the
Times, as he was contemptuously designated by the ‘"big villain"’ of the
Tribune, were
Napoleon Bonaparte, with four hundred thousand Frenchmen at his heels, and four hundred millions actually in his exchequer, instead of being, as he is, a parvenue Yankee editor of a second-rate newspaper, he could not dispose of the
South more magnificently than he announces their fate in the above proclamation.
But it is impossible, so far as he is concerned, to feel any emotion but contempt.
It is well remembered that his ‘"two well appointed armies of 25,000 men each,"’ were to have taken
Richmond long ago with the greatest ease, yet though four different armies, making in the aggregate a hundred and twenty thousand men, have been arrayed against us at four different points, not one of them has as yet made ten miles of progress within our borders, except in the
Northwest, where treason had already prepared their way and they had no opposition to encounter.
But as the programme of
Raymond's masters, the extracts we have given deserve attention.
They will suggest to our authorities the proper course for the Confederate Government to pursue.
This business of confiscation is a game at which two can play, and we must be prompt to make the
North reimburse us for any losses we may suffer.
This is a practical advantage which we anticipate from the publication of the
Times' article, in addition to the amusement it must afford our readers.
To see a little, half- educated, parvenue Yankee, disposing of the fate of empires with the air of a Jove, is a spectacle that relieves with its broad farce the dreary tyranny of war.
