sities of the country will regulate appropriations, under existing circumstances, cannot be doubted."

Certainly not. If, in the last two lines we read “ Galphin, Ewing, and other claimants," for "country," we may admit the truth of the remark, as far as expenditure goes. We may, however, be permitted to doubt, even with that modification, the necessity for "raising the duty on imports," as a means of increasing the revenue. The ordinary revenues for the quarter ending March 31 are, as reported officially, $12,923,984-a larger sum than ever before was collected in the first quarter of the current year and this sum has exceeded the current expenditure for the quarter, by more than three and a half millions of dollars. The revenue and expenditure quarterly for the year, excluding loans, have been as follows:

UNITED STATES REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE FOR THE YEAR ENDING MARCH 31.

$1,156,382....$1,748,715.......$36,145,456.......$39,049,568

Total,...

Expended.

1st quar'r,....$3,909.143.... $3,001,428.

$1,766,224.... $10,718,708 34,499.... ..8.068,009

..1,912,752.

9,723,162

4th 66

.4,920,046. ..2,788,407

.57,370................9,383,870

.2,062,966. .1,618,096.

Total,....$14,374,629...$11,973,112....$7,775,410....$3,770,845....$37,893,759

The customs have reached a higher figure than ever before in the term of twelve months; and notwithstanding the influence of land warrants in reducing the revenues from lands, the ordinary revenue exceeds, by $1,165,809, the current expenditure, including interest, although the expenditures under the civil list, by means of "Galphinizing," have been raised from $11,556,605, which included the Mexican installment in 1849, to $14,374,629 in 1850. But for those iniquities, there would have been a surplus of at least $3,000,000. The loans received for the year, amount to $9,699,050, and the loans paid, $6,993,328. The greater proportion of the latter are Treasury notes funded. The net receipts of loans are $2,705,722; which, added to the $1,165,809 surplus revenue, make $3,871,581.

Thus, instead of a deficit, there has been an increase of surplus on hand of nearly four millions, making more than $8,380,000 of coin lying idle on hand, while the government is daily funding Treasury notes payable on demand into stock having twenty years to run, at six per cent. interest, that is to say, for the money in the Treasury, the government is paying $500,000 per annum interest. The first loan which falls due, is the 5 per cent. of $6,400,000 in July, 1853. That stock is now selling at 24 per cent. premium, and the government will have to pay 15 per cent. interest on it before it is due. It can, therefore, now afford to pay even as high as 12 per cent. premium for it, to get it in, and get the money out of the Treasury. This ought to be done forthwith, and should have been done last fall. Instead of an imbecile and dishonest Executive asking for a further loan of $16.000,000, he ought to have asked for authority to redeem the existing one, at a premium necessary to get it in. The Secretary gravely proposed to raise the import duties to obtain means to "extinguish our heavy public debt," while a large surplus was accumulating on his hands. It is important that the present debt should be liquidated, inasmuch as it is daily becoming more manifest that the present tariff may be cut down one-half, and still yield enough for the economical administration of the government, not including the Galphin system.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

SLAVERY, THE UNION, AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. Lecture by the Rev. J. W. Cummings, D. D., of St. Stephen's Church, New-York.

While the Christian of every sect devoutly regards the teachings of our Saviour as the revelation of the great scheme of spiritual redemption, and recognizes in the gradual spread of his precepts among mankind the irresistible power of divine truths, so must the Republican and the Statesman ascribe to the same cause that progressive political amelioration of mankind, which has become so apparent in these latter years. The advent of Christ was the dawn of civil liberty. In the ages antecedent to his appearance among men, each successive period of the growth of civilization was marked by a larger scope of operations, and by the increased exercise of latent powers, implying that each successive race surpassed in some degree the freedom of its predecessors. It is obvious to all on reflection, that the idea of liberty is that also of power. It is in fact the exercise of power, and the degree of liberty of any race of persons must therefore be in proportion to the powers they possess. Thus the liberty of an untutored savage consists simply in the exercise of his physical power in hunting, fishing and war, restrained only by seasons, localities and opposing force. But in this liberty he enjoys no protectionit is at the mercy of a greater physical power. His intellectual liberty goes no farther than his very limited mental power, which is not sufficient to afford protection to his physical liberty, but that power which in civilized nations is above and beyond these, controlling both, viz. moral power, he possesses scarcely at all. Now the liberty which preceded Christ began with the exercise of physical power, and was improved with the development of the intellectual power. Under the teachings of the Saviour the moral power was added to these, and the development of all has in later ages produced that degree of liberty which we enjoy, and which was unparalleled in any prior age. The Jews were much disappointed that Christ or the Messiah did not appear with the pomp and physical force of a temporal king, to overturn by violence the existing state of things, and by emancipating them from the Roman yoke restore Israel to the dignity of an independent nation. The moral power which he represented, and which was the foundation of human liberties at large, they could not and would not understand. When they were groaning under sway of the Caesars, and were impoverished by the imperial exactions, they did not relish the injunction to "render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's." He everywhere enjoined submission to the existing order of things, well knowing the ultimate influence of the moral power he was imparting to his disciples, in raising the depressed and freeing the bond. He did not for the gratification of impatient reformers put himself at the head of an armed insurrection, and plunge the Roman world in blood, in order to abolish the existing relation of masters to servants; on the other hand he preached obedience to the latter, while he enjoined on all forgiveness of injuries, and to "love thy neighbor as thyself." Through all the vicissitudes of nearly twenty centuries the spirit of these teachings has been preserved by the Church, and the gradually approaching political equality of the people of the Christian world has been the result. The uniform teaching of the Church has been respect to constituted authorities, at the same time holding those authorities responsible for their power; and whenever a despotic government, freed from the control of the Church, assumed new prerogatives over the people, that was held as much a rebellion against the existing order of things as if the people had sought forcibly to deprive their rulers of old privileges. Thus, when Imperial Britain set up a new principle of government for the colonies, the latter resisted with the sanction of the Church. This conservative "power, which in the age of iron, burst forth to curb the great and raise the low," is even now exerting itself to preserve in steady progression those liberties of mankind which are anchored in our institutions, but in which the several degrees of liberty, viz., personal, social and political, are dependent upon the physical, intellectual and moral powers possessed by those who claim to exercise them. Of these two latter powers the black race are not pos sessed, although in their state of vassalage to the whites they are slowly acquiring them; and when they shall have become intellectually and morally capable of exercising social and political liberty, they will be far in advance of any other dark race. Among the most eloquent and devout expounders of the teachings of Christ in this respect, is to be found the accomplished divine, whose lecture delivered at the Tabernacle in New-York, on the 3d of May, was listened to with delighted attention by a large and crowded audience. The learned lecturer disclaimed all intention of speaking as a politician, but as a sincere Catholic and an "independent American," simply to describe

the course of the Church in relation to the subject of slavery. He reminded his hearers that this was not a new question to the Church, but that it was one coeval with her existence. At her appearance the white population of the world were all slaves, and freemen were the few exceptions. The social rights, properties and lives of the many were at the mercy of the few masters. In the early ages of the world slavery was not only permitted, but expressly enjoined by the divine command.

Both thy BONDMEN and thy BONDMAIDS, which THOU SHALT HAVE, shall be of the HEATHEN that ARE ROUND ABOUT YOU: of them SHALL YE BUY BONDMEN AND BONDMAIDS. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them SHALL YE BUY, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and THEY SHALL BE YOUR POSSESSION. And ye shall take them AS AN INHERITANCE for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession: they shall be your BONDMEN FOREVER; but over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor."-Levit. 25.

This state of things continued in a greater or less degree down to Christ and his Apostles, who expressly directed its continuance. From this point the learned Doctor argues as follows:

"The Redeemer gave, as a precept, that his disciples should "render unto Cæsar the things that are of Caesar, and to God the things that are of God." The Apostle St. Paul applies this general rule to the case under consideration, where he tells servants (which then meant slaves) to be submissive and obedient to their masters, and when he sends back to his owner the slave Onesimus, whom he had baptized in the Christian faith. The principle thus announced directed the counsels of the Church, as she proceeded on her heavenly mission. She hoped for a state of civil equalization among men, which would undoubtedly prove more favorable to Christian morality. But, at the same time, she respected the order of society which she found in the world. Slavery could not have been denounced and attacked, without subverting at a blow the rights of property and the jurisprudence of the world. Rules were soon established, which ameliorated the condition of the bondsman. Severe laws were passed, which prohibited the traffic of prisoners, and other restrictions laid upon masters; but it is certain that a wholesale abolitory decree was not passed by the Catholic Church. In short, to sum up the subject in a few words, Christ and the Church did not bring to bear upon slavery, as an institution, the Christian code of positive legislative justice. They left it to be controlled, tempered, or removed by the law of Christian charity. As in other cases of the kind, so likewise in this; he who acts in the name of Christian charity, is bound to effect its good works with holy prudence and enlightened zeal, according to the different circumstances of times, places, and persons. It is then to be understood that the Church did condemn cruelty and oppression; that where she bound slave-holders in virtue of right and justice, she did so by explicit and individual enactments; that for slavery as an institution, independent of particular cases, and independent of her other laws, she has legislated only in her code of Christian charity. When I say charity, I do not mean philanthropy, which signifies friendship for men, but is applied in our day to every sch me of fanaticism; nor do I mean sentimentality, but the law of Christian love, which, though it cannot be embodied in the code of the legislator, operates more powerfully than any human law-just as the sway of the mother is more perfect and permanent than the guidance of the nurse and the vigilance of the stepmother. In these last remarks, you have the whole sum and substance of Catholic doctrine in relation to the institution of slavery throughout the world. What the Church taught in theory she followed successfully in practice. She preached obedience to the slave for the love of God, and bade the master be merciful for the fear of His justice. He who commandeu and he who obeyed, were to act as having duties to discharge-the one towards the other-of which a strict account would one day be demanded. When meeting at the threshhold of the house of God, the master and the slave forgot all social distinctions, and saw in each other only a brother. They knelt together at prayer, and one asked a blessing for the other. If, in the course of time, the slave became free, his liberty was given as a boon of Christian love, and his manumission was effected before the altar of God. The world was gradually prepared by the Church for the abandonment of slavery, but her work began in the souls of the masters. It was gradually doue, and slave and master were equally pleased at its results."

The learned lecturer then alluded to the injury which the extreme opinions of emancipationists inflict upon the cause they pretend to advocate, rebutting the idea that slavery should be abolished because of the phrase "all men are born free," and denying that slavery is contrary to the laws of God and man," being in accordance with both the divine mandate and human legislation. He also alluded to those atrocious blasphemies of the Abolitionists against God, his Son, and his holy word, which pretended

Christians will calmly listen to at annual meetings. The singular contrast between the sympathy of the English for black slaves and their obdurate oppression of their white brethren, did not escape his pungent sarcasm :—

"Without stopping here to inquire into the practicability of the redemption of slaves, or the supposed guilt of the American people, let us just look at the consistency of those gentlemen. We do not find them abandoning their speculations in slave-grown cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar. Instead of pulling down their cotton factories, they are increasing their number and enlarging their extent. Their clashing machinery, with iron jaws, cries out for more raw food. These self-sacrificing agitators have no objection to sweeten, with molasses, the very throats that are hoarse in crying out against the slavelabor from which it comes? When an American is traveling in England, they abuse him, because he will not plunge into the horrors of civil war to put an end to slavery. They would not admit poor Sambo to a seat in their cushioned pew, yet they accuse us of cruelty in not giving him a seat in the Senate, or in the House of Representatives. How very slow they are in removing the yoke off the necks of their fellow-subjects in the sister country? What is the reason they do not send relief to the down-trodden, but noble people of Ireland? You will find many, very many, Americans, and those, too, belonging to slave-holding states, who have contributed to alleviate her sufferings; but my word for it, you will rarely meet one who has done so among these philanthropists.'

The speaker showed that at the formation of the Constitution the question did not embrace black freedom and slavery, but was simply of white freedom, and that the United States has done more for the suppression of the slave-trade than England and all other nations together. It is undeniably true that under our institutions, not only have great numbers of slaves been emaucipated without purchase, at least as many as the British Government paid for in her own colonies; but although the number of slaves has greatly improved by reason of their material well being, yet the condition of the whole has been mentally so improved and so physically ameliorated, that the most unscrupulous Abolitionist does not deny that it is superior to that of any of the working classes of Europe. The lecturer pointed out the continuance in this direction as the only true means of ultimately redeeming the black race. To this view he very justly called to mind the prejudices which exist among the uninformed against Southern Planters, which prejudices, no doubt, to a considerable extent, originate in the misrepresentations of designing men.

"We are taught at the North to consider that every Southern gentleman is a brownfaced individual, with a straw hat and a cat-o-nine-tails in his hand, and in so doing, we are about as just as the numerous people in England, who, having taken their ideas of Americans in general from books of travel, think that a native of the United States must necessarily be a slim specimen of humanity, who is always in the act of chewing tobacco, whittling a piece of pine wood, and drawling unintelligible jargon through his nose. If it be true that noble physical development and manly proportions are usually the accompaniment of a good mind, the men and women of Maryland and Virginia, those of Kentucky and Louisiana, would lose nothing, to say the least, if compared to those of the New-England States, ourselves and NewJersey. People seem to be of opinion, that a Southern man is so much in favor of slavery, that he will maintain not only that it is a necessary state of things, but that it is the best state of things, so that he would not have it changed, even if he were to gain by it. I do not pretend to have more experience, nor as much as many who listen to me, but I must say, although a young man, that I have traveled from Massachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico, and never heard such a proposition maintained or advanced even by a single individual.”

The misconceptions and follies that float in relation to the South are mostly of a piece with the idea of a respectable old lady and warm Abolitionist in a neighboring town, who having heard of the "use of the cat," with the aid of a little imagination, asserted that young negroes were stripped and exposed to the fury of an irritated tom-cat, until their very "skins were scratched off them," in order to amuse Southern ladies. Instead of giving way to irritating criminations, all ought first to stand by the Union above all other considerations, as in that Union alone can be found the path of progress and of protection to the full exercise of liberties to the extent of the powers we possess.

The slave obeys for God's sake, unless where he is commanded to do aught against the will of God. This being the state of things in the country, it is clear that we will obey the Church, by doing what we are directed to do by the laws of the country, and that we will do what the laws direct us to do by obeying the Church. Let our Federal Government manage this question as it thinks proper-let them compromise, or not compromise-let them bring in the Wilmot proviso or any other proviso-or leave out the Wilmot proviso and every other proviso-let them bring in California

or bring out Texas-in short. let them bring up, or bring down, or bring over, or bring under, whatever they please, only let there be brought about no disunion. We must love our Southern brethren, and they us; and arrange our family difficulties as brethren should. This Republic is a harp, of which the federal compact is the golden frame, and the sovereign States are the chords of silver, joined harmoniously together, with no restraint but the law. Relax one of these chords, or subject it to unequal tension, and the others will be untuned by the discordant sound of one. Take away a string, and you destroy the harmony of the whole instrument. This young Republic again is like a beautiful machine, invented by some of her ingenious sons. Her State charters are like so many wheels, one indenting the other, and all turned by the large wheel of the Federal Constitution. She is in good working order, is this machine; a patent has been taken out for her; her wheels are well oiled, and she has got the steam pretty fairly up. Who proposes now to stop one of the wheels, or to take one or more of them out? If such an attempt be made, perhaps the machine will get out of order, and stop; but it is far more likely that the imprudent adventurer who attempts such a thing, will be knocked in the head by the crank, or scalded with hot-water from the boiler."

The eloquent Doctor reminded his readers of the fact that the eyes of English and European despots are upon us, eagerly hoping for that commotion which their agents, aided by demagogues here, are striving to bring about, that they may in the ruin of this Republic, have an unanswerable argument for their own continual oppressions. He closed with an earnest and eloquent appeal for the preservation of the Usion, which is to be effected not by finding fault with our neighbors, but by fighting against our own blind passions, pride and prejudices, which are the source of every impiety. We regret that our limits will not permit larger extracts from the lecture, which has been published at length in the New-York "Freeman's Journal" for May 25th, and to which we commend our readers. The most enthusiastic and prolonged applause followed the conclusion, and the audience pressed forward to greet the reverend gentleman as he retired.

MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF MARIE ANTOINETTE, Queen of France. By Madame Campan, First Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen. From the third London edition; with a Biographical Introduction, from "the Heroic Women of the French Revolution." By M. de Lamartine, Member of the Executive Government of France. 2 vols. A. Hart, (late Carey & Hart,) Philadelphia.

Marie Antoinette stands out in history as an extraordinary example of that terrible retribution which sooner or later overtakes the abuse of an usurped power, that is, of a power exercised over a people from whom it is not derived. For centuries France groaned under the oppressions of a long line of despots, who held them in a subjection so complete, as to doliy for a century that popular progress which manifested itself in England early in the 17th century. As there was less of republican virtue in the people, liberty worked out its ends more slowly, by means of the vices of the rulers; and when Louis XVI. came to the throne, the volcano was near its rupture. The startled governments of the world were about to receive an awful lesson in the downfall of a monarch. To make that example more appalling. he brought with him to share his fate a daughter of the Cæsars-a child of the Empress Maria Theresa. She was of surpassing beauty and majesty of person, and of a`mind and character such as should grace the most exalted station of a people's choice. Her character, her position, and person, awakened unbounded enthusiasm, such as fully to justify the celebrated de scription by Burke-"Never lighted on this earth, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in-glittering like the morning star; full, of life, and splendor, and joy." This brilliant being, the admired of all beholderspossessed of power, a throne, youth-all that could bring happiness to the daughter, wife, and mother of kings, was suddenly, as the representative of a line of despots, arraigned before the newly-created tribunal of the people, and aw at one blow her power and throne destroyed, her husband executed, her friends exiled, her daughter imprisoned, her son in custody, and herself occupying in rags a dungeon, destitute of the necessaries of life, and the object of execrations from a people ignorant and debased through the crimes of their former rulers. The story of this fearful fall is told by Madame Campan with extraordinary vivacity and interest. The work is got up by the publisher, A. Hart, of the late well-known firm of Carey & Hart, of Philadelphia, in a style which as well fits it for every library, as the matter makes it indispensable.