Concerning National Holidays

The recent action of Congress in making, for the first time, the twenty-second of February, being the anniversary of Wasbington's birthday, a public hohday in the government offices, brings into notico the question of national holidays. Speaking strictly, it may be asserted that we have no national holiday in this oountry, with the single exception of the Fourth of Jnly; and even this day, so universally observed, ia not a holiday thróughout the country by act of congress. In fact congress has no power over the subject of social and religious observances generally. These are matters which, under our peculiar form of government, are reserved to the States and to the people. The most that congress can do or lias ever assumed to do is to legislate with regard to what days may be treated as holidays in the departments at Washington and in the offices of public business thróughout the country. Even the recent joint resolution which led to the observance of the twenty-second of February in the public offices of the government was conflaed by its terms to the prosent year, as the centennial year of American independence. Subsquently to the twenty-second of February Senator Edmunds introduced a bilí to make the anniversary of Washington's birthday a holiday in theDistrict of Columbio, and Senator Conkling, on occasion of the joint resolution which adjourned both houses of congress over the twenty-second of February, took occasion to intímate his belief that th time woijld soon come, if it had not a ready arrived, when it would become congross to take the same official notie of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, b setting it apart as a holiday for confp; and the departmente. - Cinoinnati Com mercial. ,