did
the Cabinet of Washington see its error before or after the demand for
redress?* The captor was feasted at Boston, and the captives in prison
hard by. If the wrong-doer was to be punished, it was Captain Wilkes
who ought to have gone into limbo. At any rate, as "the Cabinet of
Washington could not give its approbation to the commander of the 'San
Jacinto,'" why were the men not sooner set free? To sit at the
Tremont House, and hear the captain after dinner give his opinion on
international law, would have been better sport for the prisoners than
the grim salle-a-manger at Fort Warren.

* "At the beginning of December the British fleet on the
West Indian station mounted 850 guns, and comprised five
liners, ten first-class frigates, and seventeen powerful
corvettes. . . . In little more than a month the fleet
available for operations on the American shore had been more
than doubled. The reinforcements prepared at the various
dockyards included two line-of-battle ships, twenty-nine
magnificent frigates--such as the 'Shannon,' the 'Sutlej,'
the 'Euryalus,' the 'Orlando,' the 'Galatea;' eight
corvettes armed like the frigates in part, with 100- and 40-
pounder Armstrong guns; and the two tremendous iron-cased
ships, the 'Warrior' and the 'Black Prince;' and their
smaller sisters the 'Resistance' and the 'Defence.' There
was work to be done which might have delayed the commission
of a few of these ships for some weeks longer; but if the
United States had chosen war instead of peace, the blockade
of their coasts would have been supported by a steam fleet
of more than sixty splendid ships, armed with 1,800 guns,
many of them of the heaviest and most effective kind."--
Saturday Review: Jan. 11.

I read in the commercial news brought by the "Teutonia," and published
in London on the present 13th January, that the pork market was
generally quiet on the 29th December last; that lard, though with more
activity, was heavy and decidedly lower; and at Philadelphia, whiskey
is steady and stocks firm. Stocks are firm: that is a comfort for the
English holders, and the confiscating process recommended by the Herald
is at least deferred. But presently comes an announcement which is not
quite so cheering:--"The Saginaw Central Railway Company (let us call
it) has postponed its January dividend on account of the disturbed
condition