to invasions of Mexican territory from that quarter | the Russians in the Dobrudscha have remained comfor the present. From Oregon there is no news of special interest. The Legislature was to adjourn on the 28th of April. A general war has broken out among the Indian tribes. The question of organizing a State government and applying for admission to the Union, is beginning to be agitated;-the public feeling seemed to be in favor of it. pletely inactive since taking possession of it. The fortress of Silistria has been attacked on several occasions, but only from a distance, and without any marked results. The Russian reserves, at the latest advices, were taking position on the Sereth, a river which flows from the Bukowine, parallel to the frontier of Transylvania. By this movement the front of their army is turned rather toward the West than the South, making Moldavia the base of operations, and threatening Austria instead of Turkey. This movement has created some uneasiness at Vienna, and has led to the dispatch of an Austrian force of 95,000 under General Schlick to the menaced frontier. The Austrian government abstains from From the Sandwich Islands we learn that the project of annexation to the United States is again exciting attention. In the Hawaiian Legislature, on the 20th of April, the Committee on Foreign Relations made a report on various petitions on the subject, which had been referred to them-to the effect that it was a matter over which the Legisla-making any explicit statement to the Western Powture had no control, as it belonged exclusively to the treaty-making power :-the report also expresses full confidence in the action of the King and his Council. It is understood that Mr. Gregg, the United States Commercial Agent at the Islands, has been engaged for some time in negotiating a treaty of annexation; and, according to rumor, his efforts are likely to be attended with a good degree of success. ers of her object in taking this step, but it is clearly designed to enable her to act with effect either against Russia or Turkey as she may ultimately elect. Indeed this is substantially stated by the Emperor in a letter to General Schlick. Meantime attempts at negotiation have not been abandoned. A treaty has just been published between Austria and Prussia, dated the 20th of April, in which those two powers mutually guarantee to each other the whole of their respective territories, and engage to resist in common every attack, no matter from what quarter it may come. They also agree to support each other in any advance which either may make in support of German interests. They further declare that the indefinite occupation of the Sultan's territory on the Lower Danube by the Russian troops will endanger the political, moral, and mate From New Mexico we have intelligence of a severe engagement at Taos, between two companies of United States dragoons, numbering sixty in all, under command of Captain Magruder and Lieutenant Davidson, and about three hundred Apache and Utah Indians. The United States troops had twenty-two killed, and twenty-one wounded: only seven escaped. The Indians retreated to the west side of the Rio del Norte, whither they were pur-rial interests of the whole Germanic Confederation, sued by Colonel Cooke, with nearly two hundred dragoons and riflemen. Colonel C. came upon their camp, and took them by surprise, on the 8th of April. The Indians made a desperate resistance, but were routed with severe loss: they were pursued for a long distance through very deep snow, and over an exceedingly rough country, and driven into the southern part of the Territory. MEXICO. Santa Anna, on his return to the capital from the Southwestern District, officially announced a complete victory over General Alvarez, the leader of the insurrection, ordered the most profuse rejoicings over the result, and embraced the opportunity to invite further loans in aid of the government. Later advices render it certain that he was repulsed, and that General Alvarez in fact achieved a substantial victory. Santa Anna reached Acapulco on the 19th of April, with about six thousand men. He was at tacked the next day, and completely routed; his troops were pursued, and several engagements took place between the opposing forces, in all of which Santa Anna was defeated; and it was with a good deal of difficulty that he succeeded in making his escape. The affairs of the government are in great confusion, and there is little doubt that a new change is close at hand. THE EASTERN WAR. So far as events are concerned, the war in Eastern Europe makes but little progress. No decisive or important engagement has yet taken place; no great movement has been made on either side, and the attitude of the contending parties is rather that of preparation for war than of a hearty and zealous prosecution of it. Some slight changes in the position of the Russian troops have been made since Prince Paskiewitch assumed command. The right wing of the army has evacuated Lesser Wallachia, by what appears to be a retrograde movement; and as well as of their own states, and that this danger will augment in proportion as Russia encroaches on the Turkish dominions. They then refer with an expression of hope to the last assurances given at Berlin by the Court of St. Petersburg; but, in case the Prussian propositions dispatched from Berlin on the 8th of April should not be successful in obtaining the required security for the evacuation of the Principalities, they can expressly provide a more special engagement for their intervention. If these hopes shall be disappointed, the Austrian Government binds itself to require the Russian Court to suspend the advance of its army into Turkey, and to give securities for the speedy evacuation of the Principalities, and the propositions are also to be energetically supported by Prussia. Should the reply of the Imperial Court be unfavorable, one of the contracting parties (by which we presume that Austria is meant) will adopt measures in order to obtain this security. In the event of an incorporation of the Principalities, or an attack or passage of the Balkan, on the part of Russia, both the German Powers agree to join in a declaration of offensive hostilities. It is deemed quite likely that Russia will pursue a policy which will in their literal sense fulfill these conditions, in order to prevent Austria and Prussia from joining the Western Powers. The Russian troops on the Danube now number about 180,000 men, disposed as follows: the right, as already stated, has taken position on the Sereth, threatening Transylvania; the centre extends along the Danube to Rassova and Kalarasch, where the river turns to the north, its reserve being at Bucharest; and the left wing occupies the Dobrudscha, and maintains communication with the troops of Odessa, commanded by Osten-Sacken. The left wing of the Turkish troops occupies the river Aluta for about fifty miles from its mouth, and con nects with the centre at Rutschuck. The right wing is posted along the line of the wall of Trajan, between the Danube and the sea. fronting the Russian troops that occupy the Dobrudscha. The whole Turkish force is about 130,000. Of the foreign troops, about 36,000 are at Gallipoli : 10,000 English troops were quartered at Scutari, and more were daily expected. The Turkish fleet, consisting of twenty-two ships, has joined the allied squadrons in the Black Sea. treaty noticed above, had been kept a profound the kingdom has been withdrawn. The bill alter- On the 9th of April, the British steamer Furious was sent to Odessa, under a flag of truce, to bring away the English Consul. She was fired upon from the shore, and on the 17th, both fleets sailed for Odessa and demanded explanations from the Military Governor. These proving unsatisfactory, on the 22d a bombardment was commenced by five English and three French steamers, and was continued for several hours, the fire being warmly re-into the affairs of the conventual establishments of turned by the Russian batteries. The French Admiral's official account states that the Russian vessels in port were burned or sunk, the batteries silenced, and the establishments of the Admiralty destroyed. The Russian account charges the Allies with falsehood in their account of the incidents which led to the attack, and represent the result as substantially a Russian victory. The Czar issued a proclamation to this effect at St. Petersburg, which city he has, for some reason not apparent, declared under martial law. It is rumored that the internal affairs of Russia are giving the Emperor a good deal of uneasiness. His troops on the Danube are fearfully weakened by disease. The Circassians are exceedingly active in taking posses-upon posterity, but to provide for defraying it by sion of the forts on their coast, and have received aid and arms from both the English and French. The Greek insurrection has been very nearly suppressed, although outbreaks still occur in some of the provinces. General Baraguay d'Hilliers, upon the decision of the Turkish Government that all the Greek Christians should be banished from the FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. country, demanded that an exception should be There is very little news of interest from France, made in favor of Catholics, who, he alleged, were beyond the decision of the Emperor to form large under the protection of the French Government. military camps at St. Omer and Boulogne. This The demand was resisted as unreasonable, and the movement has excited considerable uneasiness difference became so decided that General d'Hil-in Belgium and in Prussia, and has been sharply liers was recalled, and another embassador sent out by France in his stead. Both the French and English have promised to send a force to aid in putting down the Greek rebellion, if any assistance should be required. From the British fleet in the Baltic we have no intelligence of special interest. Cruisers had been stationed off all the principal ports, so that a strict blockade was kept up. Sir Charles Napier had a very cordial reception at Stockholm, where he had an audience of the King. The Northern Powers are strongly inclined to an alliance with the Western States, and that step is strongly urged in some of their journals. In Sweden, public sentiment tends very strongly in that direction. The Government is taking measures to increase its military force, which already amounts to about 110,000 men. GREAT BRITAIN. The debates in Parliament during the month have not been of marked importance. The progress of the war with Russia has been only incidentally referred to. In reply to questions in the House of Lords on the 26th of May, the Earl of Clarendon stated that the negotiations between Austria and Prussia, which had resulted in the conclusion of the increased taxation, or by the issue of Exchequer bills, to be met by speedy resort to the same source, is severely criticised, especially by Mr. Baring and the bankers generally; but it has been thus far sustained by Parliament. The Bank of England has increased its rate of discount to 5 per cent. commented on in the British Parliament. There have been rumors of important changes in the French ministry, but as yet they are not confirmed. Decrees have been issued reducing the duties on wool imported from beyond Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope in French bottoms, and abrogating the decree of 1826, prohibiting the importation of certain products in English vessels. From Spain we have intelligence of violent internal commotions, which threaten an overthrow of the ministry. The United States Minister is said to have made various extravagant demands on the Spanish government for large indemnity for injury sustained in the detention of the Black Warrior, and also for previous violations of American rights by the colonial authorities of Cuba. While nothing authentic is known of these transactions, it is reported that the Spanish government has refused any thing in the way of indemnity, but has granted six thousand dollars to the owners of the Black Warrior, on their prayer that their losses may be repaired. It is further stated that the adjustment of these matters in dispute has been intrusted to a special agent sent to Washington for that purpose. A large reinforcement of the Spanish army has been sent out to Cuba. SHA Editor's Cable. HALL THE MURDERER ESCAPE' It is but a brief period since this question was asked with an intensity of feeling which has seldom been manifested in our country. Its recency, as well as its deep importance, makes it a fit theme for that department of our editorial labors in which we would ever seek to employ some fact of present passing interest as the suggestive medium of the most universal and abiding truth. Shall the murderer escape? With what an universal burst of irrepressible indignation was the question uttered? From Maine to Texas-in every State, and especially in the one on whose annals the Ward murder and the Ward acquittal had left their deepest stain, all voices joined in the utterance of one unanimous sense of wrong. Indignation is too tame a word. It was wrath-a people's wrath-poured forth in tones of wailing for outraged justice, and with that deep inward emotion which constitutes the grandeur of the moral, in distinction from the outward or physical sublime. The storm has passed by, the strong feeling has subsided, and we may venture upon a calm and philosophical analysis of its essential nature. No scientific convention ever proposed to itself a problem of wider practical value, or profounder theoretical interest. One of the most striking characteristics of this grand social phenomenon is its universality. It is not confined to the moral, the religious, the known advocates of law and order, whose well-tuned sensibilities, it might be expected, would be painfully shocked at such a discord in the social scale. The feeling is not a peculiarity of saints or sinners, but of humanity-of humanity, even in its most fallen state. The vicious, the selfish, the worldly, the men in other respects of obtuse moral ideas, ay, even the cruel and the malevolent, all resent it as a wrong, not to themselves, but to justice, to truth -to something which they deeply feel as having a real existence, even though they may not be able to analyze or define it-as a wrong, in short, to that ideal abstract righteousness that has its representative in the soul of the worst man who has not yet become a demon, and without which man could not be a depraved, because he could not be a moral being. He who could himself commit murder, might be pained, truly and sincerely pained, at the escape, or impunity, of the murderer. The very wretch whose crime has called forth this universal indignation would have felt it had it been the case of another. He was a literary man, it has been said. He has written tales of fiction. He might have represented virtue triumphant and crime visited with righteous retribution, and all this as feelingly, ay, as sincerely, too, as it has been ever done in the pages of Dickens or Thackeray. The feeling belongs not to the individual as an individual, but to the humanity of which he partakes, and therefore is it strong, clear, unerring, universal, indestructible. No human being ever wholly loses it until he sinks to that lost condition where the man is transmuted into the fiend, and evil is chosen, not merely for the strong sensual temptation, but as the abstract good. As it is universal and generic, so also is it unselfish. What hurt had Matthew Ward done to us personally or socially? The most of us had never heard his name. We knew not his victim. We had no near relations with the society whose outward order had been disturbed. As to any injury, or any benefit from him, past, present, or to come, we had nothing to fear, as we had nothing to hope. It was purely unselfish, we say, in its personal aspects. It was also equally removed from any spirit of social utilitarianism in the ordinary senses of the word. There entered into the feeling no estimate of social advantages or disadvantages, as these fall under the common definitions of political economy. It was not even the prevention of future crime, or the mischief that might result from the example of the impunity, that formed the chief moral characteristics of the sentiment or the idea. We appeal to the universal human consciousness. Such utilitarian results, it is true, were sometimes dwelt upon in newspaper paragraphs; they came well in aid of the rhetorical argument; they have their value, their great value, in the enforcement of the social duties through their more immediate benefits; still, they did not enter into the essence of the feeling we are attempting to analyze. A wrong had been done, a wrong of fearful magnitude, but it was not so much the wrong to any individuals, or to any number of individuals, or to any society, or to any earthly tangible interests of any kind, that was first, and strongest, and most peculiar in the emotion. The murder itself was not so grievous a wrong as the acquittal; but both were felt, and the latter especially, to be a wrong to that which is so distinctly acknowledged by the conscience, yet so difficult to present to the calculating understanding -the feeling, the idea (for it is both a feeling and an idea) of the Eternal Right, the immutable Justice. Here was the vital wound. It was a wrong" to law, not the law of Kentucky, or of the United States, or of all civilized society, but to the law of the universe. The impunity of murder is a grievous hurt to the universal conscience, and every man feels it just in proportion as he is a man. Individual injuries may be forgiven, personal or even social mischiefs may be healed, but this wrong to the abstract Justice could not thus be dealt with. Crime unpunished, unatoned, unsatisfied, in some way, deranges the harmony of the universe; it deflects the balance of the everlasting scales. While the discord remains unresolved it must jar painfully upon the moral sensibilities of every rational soul, and can not be endured. Benthamites, and a certain class of political economists, would fain ignore all this. But it can not be. There is a doctrine of desert as well as of social utility, and such cases as the one we have been contemplating brings it out in all its dread significance. Nature and conscience will assert their rights. Even the men who in theory are opposed to all punishment forget themselves. The spirit within them speaks out; they join for a season the universal utterance, and manifest their sympathy with the true human sentiment, in the midst of all their loud professions of a contrary doctrine. Now is this feeling right or wrong? If right, or if, in other words, it is an essential part of humanity which one can not be without and yet be a man, then, certainly, should some consideration of it enter into our estimates even of social and political utilities. All government of man must recognize him as man, and thus recognizing, must provide, in some way, for the healthful growth and development of whatever belongs to his humanity. We will go with any utilitarian here, if he will only put his standard of utility high enough. We might maintain that it is a great end of government, even of human government, to act positively in this way for the education of the moral sense-that thus human law, imperfect as it is, should be our schoolmaster, to bring us to a due appreciation of the divine-that as the view we take of it must greatly and permanently affect our moral perceptions for good or evil, this should be such that its plastic power might mould our first ideas of law and legal sanctions so as to be in harmony with, and lead to, the corresponding ideas of the higher sphere. Hence we might maintain that even human government has to do positively with immoralities, as immoralities-in other words, should punish crimes not solely on the ground of the immediate mischief they may do to person and property, but on account of their intrinsic wickedness-that in the main its gradations of penalty should have respect to moral desert-and that in acting on such principles it does not usurp the prerogatives of the divine government, but is actually carrying it out in the exercise of a legitimate delegated authority. immense magnitude of the wrong as it presents It is The feeling we have attempted to analyze is a righteous feeling. Our appeal is to the human conscience. When its decisions speak the same language, in all men and at all times, we can have no stronger evidence of its being truly the voice of God in the human soul. It may condemn many a one who utters it, and yet he can not repress it. Vindictive as some may call this sense of righteous retribution, it is perfectly consistent with the personal forgiveness of all personal injuries; it may dwell in the same breast with the most humbling sense of personal ill desert; it is the purest fountain of all right-thinking and right-feeling benevolence; it is the surest foundation of any philanthropy that deserves the name. It is in perfect harmony, too, with the most melting view of the divine mercy, and that doctrine of expiation which furnishes the ground on which it rests. But waiving all this, there is another position on which we would here plant ourselves, because we can so directly fortify it by defenses that are taken from the very camp of the utilitarian, and are therefore impregnable to all his assaults. If human law may not thus aspire to a positive training of the higher faculties, moral and intellectual, yet certainly is it bound to do them no harm. If crime unpunished inflicts more injury upon the moral sense than pestilence upon the body-if such a spectacle constantly presented tends ever to destroy that most sacred and valuable part of our humanity, the feeling of right—if the result of all this is to brutalize the soul and reduce men to a condition where all other social and political utilities lose their value, why should not the prevention of so deadly an evil be a legitimate end of human government? Can any answer be given in the negative that does not nullify every conceivable ground of social organization? To present the same idea in another lightand its importance may well justify any variety of enforcement-crime unpunished endangers the se-sonal revenge-nay, its antipolar opposite. The curity of property-crime unpunished puts in peril the safety of the person-crime unpunished causes a fatal injury as well as wrong to the moral natureit hurts us sorely in both senses of the word, it produces present pain to the soul and works a grievous damage to the spiritual health-it hurts that in us which makes us distinctively human, and we therefore ask, in all earnestness, and in bold defiance of any charge of fallacy-why should not this most essential want of our nature be distinctly recognized in any system even of utilitarian jurisprudence that grounds itself upon a computation of pain or loss? It must be recognized, or our wronged human nature will right itself in irrepressible acts of violence. Lynch law will take the place of the solemn judicial tribunal. Crime unpunished, frequently, constantly unpunished, presents a state of things that can not be endured. In the strong language of Scripture, "the land is polluted." The miasma that would have been purged by the judicial expiation rests painfully upon every conscience. In virtue of the organic oneness, every man feels the guilt, until, through the continued repetition of such an open spectacle of impunity, the conscience loses all power to feel, and the social nature becomes wholly and irreclaimably demoralized. Each special case makes its strong appeal to us, but the isolated impression is soon lost. Could we but feel the It is essentially different from the feeling of per distinction has been often taken, and yet some will never comprehend the heaven-wide distance that separates the two ideas. The damning sin of revenge consists in this very thing, that it individualizes, as we may say, and taints with selfishness the universal and unselfish feeling of the holy abstract right. This is its deadly poison, and it is this which makes it the direct antithesis of that legal retribution (whether in the divine or human government) with which some are ever confounding it. Neither is this sense of justice a barren feeling resting in itself. Like every other essential attribute of our nature, it demands a corresponding action as a satisfying of the moral craving. It not only pronounces the criminal deserving of punishment, irrespective of any utilities, but would desire that he should actually be punished. It feels a wrong if this in some way is not done. In proof of it, we need not confine ourselves to cases of murder. The appeal may be made to the most common examples of crime, by way of testing the universality of the sentiment. A newspaper near us furnishes as good a case as we could select. Alas, that it should be of such common occurrence. A company of wearied, poverty-stricken Norwegians, are landed from one of our emigrant ships, and cast homeless and friendless upon our docks. A man-shall we call him man or fiend ?-accosts them with promises of aid to their place of destination from the compensation or prevention of any individual wrong. Hence, in the ancient mythology and languages, the epithets most commonly applied to it are built upon metaphors significant of clearness, openness, exposure to the sun. Againjustice and retribution should be in their outward act, as they are in their inward nature, the antithesis of crime and revenge. As the two latter seek concealment, so the two former should ever exhibit their works in the presence of the universe. They are opposed to each other as the children of light and the children of darkness. We leave it to the reader's mind to pursue the parallel. The truth of our position is shown, moreover, in the course taken by the professed advocates of private, but the real enemies of all punishment that deserves the name. In legal phrase, they take ad in the interior of our continent; he imposes on them by false tickets of conveyance; he makes to them a fraudulent sale of land to which he has no shadow of title, and thus having obtained possession of nearly all their little means, he sends them forth to find, at every step of their journey, that they have been made the victims of the most heartless and wicked deception. Now what is the right, or righteous, feeling in view of such a transaction as this? Is it one simply of abstract passionless disapproval, or does it demand a corresponding action? Would it not cry out, as David did when his righteous universal conscience unwittingly passed sentence on his guilty individual self-"Surely the man who hath done this deed shall suffer for it!" Who that calls himself a man would be ashamed to stand up in the face of heaven, and express, not only his disapproval of the act, but his strong de-vantage of their own wrong. Having procured sire that the base perpetrator should be hurt, punished, put to pain, made to feel dolor in some way corresponding to the selfish malignity displayed in such an atrocious and unfeeling fraud? The organ of justice to use by way of accommodation some of the language of the phrenologists, although we abhor their theory-the organ of justice has been made to ache. Shall it not have its appeasing satisfaction as much as a hungry stomach? and does it not fall within the province of the law to have some regard for the higher as well as the lower want of our nature? Or if there be conceded to the Church its positive education, should not the State see to it, at least, that this precious thing, the moral sense, receive no detaiment through constant familiarity with the impunity of crime? justice to be shut up in a prison-yard or a cell, they then charge it as a stigma upon her. They reproach her with her concealment, and then use it as an argument for a still farther abrogation of her divine prerogatives. They say she shuns the light. They confine her in darkness, and then turn round and argue that that which must hide from the face of day should be wholly abolished. Even some of our most conservative minds are taken in by this cant of humanity. They do not keep their eye upon the great principle that is sacrificed. We warn them, however, that the result will be an undermining of the truth that lies at the foundation of all right law and righteous government. Justice should be rescued from this reproach. Her Nemesis should stand forth in the light as distinctly as her condemnation. She should hold aloft her sword as well as her scales. Her retribution should be as public as her judicial acts. All men are not required to witness it, but there should be no concealment. There should be such an open solemnity imparted to the transaction, that all, whether they saw it or not, might feel, at least, that they were in the presence of law executing its righteous decisions, commanding silence to the noise and bustle of business, rebuking all human selfishness, and shedding its judicial awe upon all the ways and walks of the surrounding community. Such might be the effect, if care were taken to give it all the impressiveness that courts, and legislators, and municipal Our train of thought suggests here an idea which we will venture to express, although the great majority of the community might seem, for certain reasons, to be theoretically opposed to it. It is, that the present mode of private executions adopted in some of our States is at war with the essential idea of justice. It may seem bold ground, and one on which a writer should not rashly peril his reputation either for sound thinking or right feeling, and we therefore the more rejoice that we have on our side an authority of whose support no man need be ashamed. We refer to that most learned, most profound, most conservative, most classical, most philosophical, as well as most humane of American jurists, the late Chancellor Kent. We well recol-action could throw around it. On the day of a lect a conversation in which he took decidedly capital judicial execution stores and banks and this very ground. He gave it as the result of his offices should be closed; on that night no theatre long experience that secresy in judicial proceedings should be opened. If, in the observance of such a of any kind was ever injurious. And besides it is rule, the frequency of punishment should be found the very nature of justice, he added, with a terseness inconvenient to business or to pleasure, it might and strength of meaning that would have done balance the account of utilities by putting us honor to one of the seven sages of Greece-"it is more solemnly in mind of the fearful growth of of the very essence of justice to be public; all its crime among us, and thus calling out a more earnest doings should ever be in presence of the sun." "I effort to stay the destroying plague. Thus viewed, greatly fear," continued this most upright judge and and thus conducted, the execution of law might be pure-minded man, "lest, through the device of pri- made a very different affair from an unregulated mob, vate executions, the enemies of all punishment, and under no other control than that of a sheriff and a of all right views of law, have obtained an advantage few constables, or the far worse transaction of a whose mischief it will hereafter be difficult to rec-human being smothered out of the world in some tify." We can not dwell upon this topic at length. There may be presented, however, a few of the leading thoughts that would enter into such an argument, and go to show the wisdom of this position of Chancellor Kent. Publicity is of the very essence of justice. We can not connect concealment of any kind with the idea without impairing its moral power. Such publicity is inseparable from the universality of the feeling and its demand of satisfaction to law as something entirely distinct dark prison-yard, while the noise and business and excitement of the common city life are going on as unfeelingly and as unconcernedly as though there were not transpiring in their very midst one of the most solemn transactions that could ever occupy the human hands, or engage the human thoughts. The changes are continually rung upon the demoralizing effects of public executions. And yet the argument, if there be any argument in the case at all, consists in the fallacy of charging upon such |