THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN NEWS.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume I, Issue 22, 1 June 1867, Page 2

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN NEWS.

The arrival of the Panama mail has placed us in possession of news from .England and America to the 11th April. The most important news from England is that the Reform Bill of the Derby Ministry had passed its second reading that Parliament had guaranteed a loan at i per cent, of £3,600,000 sterling', t

be raised by the Government of Canada for the construction of a railway between Quebec and Halifax; and that there was a probability of wav between England and Spain, and France and Prussia. The The two first items of news have an interest to colonial readers; but the third requires confirmation. The surpl us capital accumulated of late years in England, and the absence, since the panic, of attractive sources of investment, would render a general war popular on the Stock Exchange, and ruinous to the country. With regard to the guarantee of the Canadian Three Million loan at 4 per cent., we shall only here remark that the guarantee denied us has been willingly granted to Canada. The reasons why denied in one case and granted in the other might profitably engage the attention of our metropolitan journals. The discussion of the subject would not at all events be barren of interest, whatever it might be in results. The Reconstruction Bill, passed recently by Congress over the President’s veto, virtually disfranchises the,white and enfranchises the colored population of the Southern States. We have ever taken a deep interest in the success of the great scheme of self-government as developed in the United States, and deeply deplore the course which Congress is pursuing, which must, if persisted, in result in the destruction of the Federal Constitution. After the rebellion had been finally suppressed, “ I considered it our duty” says President Johnson, “to meet the men of the South in the spirit of forgiveness, and to conquer them oven more effectually by the magnanimity of the nation than by the force of its arms.” But Congress was not so magnanimous as the President. After showing—as ‘ we had occasion to point out the other day—that the military must be kept in strict subordination to the civil power, he observes, “whereever this lesson is not both learned and practised there can be no political freedom. It is absurd, preposterous, it is a scoff and a satire on constitutional liberty for forms of government to be prescribed by military leaders and the right of suffrage to be exercised at the point of the sword.” He concludes as follows—and we confess we should be glad to see His Excellency’s speech on opening the General Assembly conclude with a prayer of a similar import, “ I pray God that we shall all come to know that our only safetv is in the preservation of our federal constitution and in according to every State the rights which that constitution secures. *