* * * * *

Even before authentic copies of General Butler's famed 'Woman Order' had
reached us, it was generally understood that he had really done very
little more than enforce an already existing local law; yet 'with the
word' there went up a squall from the democratic press, clamoring for
his instant removal; so angry were the 'Conservatives' that any thing
should be said or done which would in any way injure the
'susceptibilities' of their beloved rebel friends.

If we are really _at war_, it is neither fit nor proper that such
expressions of sympathy for the enemy should continually appear, to keep
alive in the heart of the foe continual hopes of Northern aid. What does
the reader think, for instance, of such a paragraph as the following
from the Washington correspondence of the New-York _Herald_--which has
been copied with commendation by its colleagues:

'All conservative men here are shocked at the sweeping measures of
confiscation proposed by the radicals. They provide substantially
for the abolition of slavery, because slaveholders, for the most
part, are considered as rebels by these bills. _There are a quarter
of a million of slaveholders_, and a quarter of a million of other
property-holders in the South, _that would be made beggars by the
execution of this programme_. It is pretended that this wholesale
confiscation is for the purpose of compensating for the expenses of
the war; but none will dare to go into the Africanized South among
an infuriated people to purchase estates. It is proposed, also, to
arm the negroes, and in effect make them superior to the million of
whites, who are to be deprived of their property. Of course, under
such circumstances, there will be no cotton or other crops, nor any
demand for Northern manufactures from the South.'

Really! and so legislation at Washington is to be conducted with special
reference to protecting the property of the rebels! No confiscation,
forsooth, because the half million of rebels who have plunged us into
this iniquitous and horrible war, in the hope of utterly ruining us,
might thereby be reduced to poverty! Northern men may pay a million a
day in taxes, but the select slaveholding few who caused the taxation
are to be exempted. How shallow is the concluding '_of course_, under
such circumstances there will be no demand for Northern manufactures