40 hzve eser.h+ ptriotic ras2rv+ ancl have treateri their opponents with praiseworthy generosity during the whole course of the negotiations, and

. ihis generosity towards opponents in critical times of foreign policy is one -of the most pleasing traits of English political life. Party d8erences and factiobs disturbanc,es are alvays set aside when the energies of the Ministry are taxed by matters of European interest, The -Ministry gets fair play, and is supported emn through its faultsby the Opposition until the crisis is past-and then comes the retrikuliog and the conntry r i m up in its math and dismisses the faltering Ministry without mercy. .

The present times are critical, and the Yinistry is allowed full swing to carry out: its policy, if it has one. No one outside the Cabinet has an idding as to what is goingon. Two facts alone are ascertained-the pre- sence of o w fleet in Besika Bay and our refusal to sign the last Berlin Note. T h a t these facts betoken we do not lcnow, and we do not yet en- quire. The difficulty which the Government has to meet is this : i t llas Lo thwart any designs of Russia upon Constantinople, and it has to dp so without alienating the Christian races. It has to apllear to be tlie Iriend of the Yoslemites and the friend of the Christians i t the same time. Bnt for our dread of Russian designs upon Constantinople, and our knowledge of Russian intrigue to fomeut the revolution in order to carry out these de- signs, our sympathies would be entirely anti-Noslemite. A nation that sympskhizecl with the Poles, and with the Hungarians, and with the Ita- lians, and with every other oppressed nationality which has struggled

which side it would take in the struggle which is just commencing. But the aggrandizing designs of Russia, and the underhand part dildomatists hare been playing among these Eastern states, have, for the time at least,

.dried up the natural fountain-head of our sympathies. Our Ninistry, terefore, have to order their policy so as to guide our better nature and our political interests into one channel. It is no easy task. I t requires the caution of Lord Derby and the dash of Nr. Disraeli, but they must both be wisely.regu1ated. It: we are too cautious, we shaLI be le,t out in the cold and isolated. If we are mild or hneiful, me shall beat the throat of Rus- sia, backing up the effete despotism of Turkey. The stirring-up of the Christian races is the elererest stroke that Russian policy has plqed, but it is a trifle dangerous. If the GhTistians succeed, the confederatiou w&gh must come out of their success= will be a-forinidable burier beLween Rus- sia and the prize she has so long coveted. If they fail:. aud the Turks be victorious, foreign intervention must eusne. Germany and Anstria will

. be consulted ; and it does not seem probable that Qerrnsny would wish to see the Dunube transformed into a Russian river, or that Austria woulcl regard with complacency presence of Russian cohorts on her flank. In neither eventuality is it Iikely that Russia will draw the prim

, - against despotism during the present century, could never hesitate as to

, SOXE TIMELY ENQUIRIES. T O THE EDITOR OF THE NATION : - SIR : As a Republican, I am pleased to know that you find some cause for-satisfaction in thc letter of acceptance of Gov. Hayes. As there are s3me points on which I am in some doubt, I take the-liberty of asking the following questions :

1. Can Gov. Hayes possibly be sincere when he endorses the present Administration by approving the resolutions of the Convention which nomi- nated him, ancl when he declares fFr civil-service- reiorm ? And if not, which declaration may we rely upon as embodying his real sentiments ?

2. Is not the spectacle of a Cabinet minister acting as chairman of a party campzign committee, ancl taking charge of the canvass for the party, in itsdf a great civil-service scandal ?

3. When the canyass fol- a Presidentia.1 candid& is entrn+d to a man as chief manager whose position a,s a Cabinet officer, under any proper civi! service, mould preclub his meddling with it, and who notoriously f x years has scorned and ridicrded civil-sewice reform, is not the fact a

c more rdirtble indication of-the kind of civil-service reform we shall have in I case of success than any mere promises of the candidate can possibly he ?

In, ot5er words, %hen. a party resolves for a reform through a certain ele:ti3?, and then proopxes to effect the eleotion by a method which makes the resolee a aockery, does not this promise a continuance of scandals rather thau reformation ?

4. When, after the election, President Hsyes calls upon Mr. Ch9ndler as a subordinat? to reform his mays, and Nr. Chandler replies, It was 1 who took cliarge of this election and made it a success, and it was 4 . 5 s

aa individual and as a member of Grants Cabinet, whose mays the people approved, and not those of the Great Unknown, who a a s selected as a mere standard-bearer under my general command what can the President reply to it ? .

NR. EOLLYS PAPERS IN ITARPBBS H2.GAZIfV.. To TEE EDITUR OF THE XATIOX : Sm: A corresponclent in your issne of June 26 complains of my

I adapting too freely from English authors and artists in my article on (Modern Dwellings in Harpers N~gcuzine. I t is true that I made ex- tensive use o Eastlakes works and those of other authors, $ut it was my intention wherever I did so to give full credit. If I failed in any case to do so, it was through inadvertence. ~

Some of my designs weKe copied from Messrs. Cox L Sons advertising catalogue. I mentioned their names in this connection, but did not give them as ample credit as seemcd to me to be proper. Discovering this after my second article was printed, I wrote to their agent, promising to make whatever reparation I could. I found it impossible to do this in the subss- p e n t articles, as they were in a part of the Mizgc&m that was already stereotyped. I then promised to give them credit in my forthcoming book. . The Nessrs. Harper Glso gave them credit in their Teekty . The omission of credit in the first instance was not designed, and no one regret,s it more than I do. Yours respectfully, .

H. HEDSON EIOLLY. NET PORI%, July 14, 1676.

LITERARY COMITY. To THB EDITOR OF TH$ :

SIR : Does the notice, All rights reserved, on the tible-page of a pub- lication convey any intimation which other pnblishers are bound in law or courtesy to respect ?

I mill particularize. Kot loig ago there appeared in a periodica,l pnb- lished in England and the United States, and bearing on its title-page the above notice, an article in which mer& contained, sundry unknown, or almost unlmown, pieces by an American poet dead many years ago. The writer of the article sent me advance-sheets, transferred all his rights to me, and ,requested me for certain sufficient reasons to copyright these poems. This I did, covering them with a pblishers copyright. -

So soon as the periodical containing tliem vas published, a daily paper of some repute, disregarding the notice on the title-pzge, transferred these poems to its columns if they were public property.:

About the law there is no question ; but the point on which I wish to be informed is this : Am I right or wrong in considering this &ion a violation of literary comrly ?-I am, sir, etc., Wu. H m BROWNE.

Jdy

THE HUE-AXD-CRY AGAINST THE INDIANS. To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION :-

SIR : The destruction of General Custer and his command must be re- garded as a calamity to the Indians as well to the nation. It precipitates anew upon the tribes concerned the awakened wrath of the American people ; it aggravates the difficulties of our Indian affairs, a t all times great enough ; and it reveals the %act that the intelligence of the Government has not bee11 equal to the aanagement of these affairs. This last statement has been true from and including the Administration of General Jackson.

The press are now opening upon the Indians generally, and with a hne- and-cry in particular for the extermination of those tribes who lmve dared tr, raise their hands against the gallant soldiers of the Republic, ~ v h o mere in the field in obedience to its commands. The views of our official teachers of the press have at least the merit of going to the bottom of the question. ~ That dead men give no trouble is an adage as true of Indians as of other men. Moreover, it is an advantage t o start with a form of statement strongly against the Indians. The destructioq of &nerd Custer m d his oommand is pronounced a massacre by some of tnese journals. The term thus used precludes.extenuation ; for a massacre is a slaughter with uudis- ximinating violence, without autliority or necessity, and contrary to the usages of nations. No one could raise his voice in behalf of Indians ~vho have committed such an act. But what are the facts in this casc ? Gengral . Cnster, a t the head of three hundred cavalry, rode into an Indian encamp- ment of twenty-five hundred Indian warriors, and without preliminariej, LS we must suppose, commenced an attack. He intended to rout tliy ?ncampment, men, women, and children, and kill dl mho resisted without - Iesihtion and without remorse. Unfortunately or General Cnster and hi;

41

men, they encountered the bravest and most determined Indians now.living in America. They were surrocndecl and clcfeatecl, SO that not a man escaped. They experienced the precise fate they intended for the Indians. We admire the gallantry of Genera.1 Custer and his men ; we mourn their loss ; but who shall %lame the Sioux for defending themselves, their wives and chil- dren, when attacked in their own encampment and threatened with de- slrt1ction ? This calamity is simply a chance of war-of a war waged by our Government upon these Indians, nothing more and nothing less. For its moral character we must look to the motives which prompted our Gov- ernment in its commencement.

There are some eight or ten tribes of the Sioux or Dakotas now-living between the Nissouri River and the Rocky Mountains, in the area from Platte River on the south to the country of the Crom Indians on the north. They were forced upon the Plains from their original homes on the head- maters of the ?Hississippi, and betreen this river and the Nissouri, by the advancing tide of white settlers who demanded their lands. Minnesota was formed out of their posseFsions. They were thus compelled to change their country as well as their plan of Me, and from settlements more or less per- manent in villages to live in roving camps on the Plains. Ravinglearned to raise horses in herds, they are nom mounted and nomadic tribes, living in tents and following the herds of wild bnffalo, npon which they depend almost exclusively for subsistence. They raise nothing by cultivation. Buffalo-meat, fresh a.nd dried, -coffee and tobacco, which they obtain with their annuities or by barter of their furs and sliins, maltc up theh principal subsistence. Without a supply of buffalomeat adeqnate to their wants, they would perish from hunger. Such is their present condition and their precarious means of living. During the last ten yZrs, the discovery of gold in the Black sills attracting white settlers, the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and the constant marching of militaryforces and of Gov- ernment esploringpalties throngh their country, have endangered their sub- sistence by disturbing the wild herds of buEaloes on.their ranges and turn- ing them inother directions. This disturbance is with the Indians a mat- ter of life and death. These and other questions enter into the great problem of the affaire of the Indians of the Plains, and increa,se its difficulties.

The ~var now being prosecuted against a portion of the Dakota tribes mas commenced deliberately by the Government. In this article Ijjshall not discuss the right or mrong of the matter. Suffice it to say, that in-I868 a treaty mas made with several of the Dakota tribes, by which they sold to

Government their enlire country west: of -the Nissouri, excepting the Black Hills country, mith certain stipulations for their benefit and. toward their maintenance. The tribes assenting to-the treaby a,greed to remove to this reservation. Sitting Bull, wlio defeated General Custer, and the chiefs of some of the other tribes, refused their assent to this treaty, and, conse- quently, are not bound by it. But the Government took a dMerent viem of the matter, npon grounds not very apparent, and caused notice to be given to these chiefs and their tribes that unless they removed to this reser- vntion by January 1, 187ti, they would be treated as hostile Indians. It was equivalent. to saying that they must now accept the treaty, nolens vobns; or its acceptance woukl be compelled by force. They disregarded the noti- ficatiox, whence the powerful force sent against them, of which that of General Custer mas a fraction. Before the summer is over, we may expect t o hear of the destruetion of the great body of these unreasoning and un- reasonable Indians, who retusetp treat fpr $he snrrender of their lands upon teFms they could not approve, and mhos5 extermination may be regarded by some as a merited punishment. The good name of our country cannot bear many yars of this description.

A graver objection is the absence of intelligence and judgment in the management of our Inrliau afGirs. It is not so much an objection to the present system as the absence for the last fifty years of anything that could be called a system. The snbjcct has never received the attention it ought to have received, bscause its importance in a moral, as well as economic, sense has never been appreciated. I t mould not haw been a mistake bfty years ago if a department of Indian affairs had been created ; it mould not be a mistake to create such a department now and place it in the hands of one of t+e first men in the nxtion. SJmething of. this kiud is needecl to extricate our country from the disgrace and the reproach which are falling upon it ou* failure to perform intdligantly our public duty to this un- fortunate and declining race. The annual appropriation for Indian objects is nom in excess of five millions of dollars. It is a large sum, which, under an intelligent system and in the hands of honest men, could hare accomplished atuch good. Ir,dian appropriation bills have never been criticised or objected to by the American people. The? are willing, even aniiious, that the Government should deal liberally and generously with the India? race, whose gradual destructim seems to be the inevitable result of

-

American progress. ~ They would approve and commend m y measure which tended to mitigat9 their hardships and to improve their condition: But not- withstanding the large expentlitwes the system of Indian management, if it can be called a system, has been a toial failure. At times it has been cor- rupt. I t aims to deal with difficulties as they arise by temporary expedients instead of forecasting these difficulties and preventing their occnrrence.

What we need at the present time is a factory system for the tribes on reeerrations, which I may perhaps discuss in a subsequent letter; and as pastoral system for the mild tribes of the Plains. The. last is peculiarly adapted to the Dakota tribes. Although these tribes depend mainly npon animal food, it seems never to have occurred to the Government to induce them to rear herds of domestic cattle as a substitute or the buffalees, which in due time would afford them a permanent as well as abundant meat and milk subsistence. This experiment would not be free from difficnl- ties, as it would involve an entire change in their plan of life. Their herds must Ice wintered, either by driving them south towards the Indian Terri- tory or by making hay in the summer in the vicinity of their camps. Bltt it is plain that where the buffaloes can live in millions in.the mild state, do- mestic cattle can be raised in millions mith the superadded care of - herdsmen. Moreover, tribes who can raise and minter herds of horses can be tanght to raise and winter herds of cattle. The Indians hare already learned to raise horses in herds, which requires more skill and care than to raise the former. Until they have learned that the increase of the herd can be made to yield them all the meat they need, it monld be necessary or the Government to own the stock and to furnish herdsmen to instruct them-in their care and maintenance. A few years of intelligent and perwr-ering effort would solve the problem in the Indian mind ; and when the art was learned his future would be assured. As a pastoral people on the great cen- tral Plains, there is ewry reason to belive that Vnese Indian tribes would become wealthy, independent, and contented, and that in time they would furnish ns with meat from their superabundance. This is a far higher destiny than t h i t now immediately before them,

The recent treaty with the Dakota tribes, as we understand, requires the Government to furnish them with cattle for their daily consumption. The experiment of teaching them how to fake their own supply mould be economical, if no other reason existed. Their reservation is west of the meridian of arable land on the Plains. There is, therefore, not the slightest probability that they mill ever~become cultivators of land. If the GoTern- ment expects to feed them in perpetuity, in order to keep them on the reservation, it is a senseless- and discreditable scheme. . It has become a saying in Indian Government circles that it is cheaper t o feed the Indians than t o fight them. This may be true, but it is not the less disgrace- ful, because such a conclusion should have suggested the remedy.

If the Government thirty years ago had inaugurated a pastoral system among these tribes, the present disssters mould not have occurred ; and if they undertake it now they will remove the cause of future difficulties which are likely, to spring from the same uncertainty of subsistence.

LEWIS H. ~KORGAX. July IO, 1876. -___ ~-

XQteS. URD & HOUGHTON are abmt to issue a new and revised edition of H Dr. Morrill Wymans mork on Autumnal Catarrh ; a cheap and

popular reprint of Brooms $Philosophy of tile Law ; and a red-line edition of the Poetical Worlrs of Alice and Phoebe Cary2-In the Ameri-icnt~

for JUIY 8 we notice its first employment of the heliolype from nature. The subject is the porch of a well-known marehouse in Boston. The effectiveness and utility of. this kind of print, RS compared with the customary black-and-white reproductions in the same journal, are well shown here, inasmuch as the original pen-and-ink elevation of the entiTe buildingis also given. and it would be impossible even for an architect to infer from it the true character and real beauty of the detail in question. -The Xagland BLstoricd Crene~logic-(1 23egis:er for July is ,a self-styled centenary number. I t opens with a sketch of Samuel Adarcs, accompanying an engraving of his portrait by Copley, and for the rest it abonnds in hjtherto nnpuh1ished autograph letters of promiuent actors- in the Rwolution. Gen, Knoxs diary during his Ticonderoga expediti. and theHon. Harrison Gray Otiss recollections of that worthy commander, are particularly pleasant reading. - The set of War Etchings, by Edwin Forbes, recently exhibited at the galleries OC the Army and Navy and Union League Clubs have been prepared for sale, and are to be offered throughout the country.