Miscellany: Pro And Con

Almost every day's mail brings ntelligence of some lalal duel, some dark assassination, or otheratrociuus murders, perpetnited in Georgio.Miseissippi, Louisiana, or aome other Southern State. These murders, inany of them most fcrocious, háve nearly ceased to shock the public feeling. - The accounts of them have come, and keep coming. 60 fasi on each other's h eis. that few read their details exrept suchas have an appetite lor "all monstrous. all prodigious things." So familiar has the eyo become with such notices, that they are considered as iiattersof course or a son of stereotyped aiFair, and we almost as rnuch expccttosee a journul, froni thatquarter, without a list of marriages, as without an nssortment of murders. 1 hese murders. by duelists, nssassins, nnd oiher butchers of men, are, almost all oi thom, so far as ihey come to light, done by the Anglo-Saxons of those States - that part of the population whi h comprehends n'jt the hase African blood, as, in seorn, they cali it. but the intclligence, the rank, the 'chivilry," in short, all the lements jf grentness, and all lts c.mpounds, in thatboastci región of oivilizntion and magnanimity, where "slavery is the corner stone ol a republic." Some are not a little perplexed to find out the philo8ophy of thiscarnage wlipre so much pricaution is used, by so nnny, to guird against it. for there U no pari of the country where so much pains is taken to preserve lite, in all places where itie likely to be expnsed to danger. If a man g o abroad there, he goes arnied 10 the teëth. - Iti3the very paradise of r.fles, hair-triggers, bludgeons. sword-canes, bovvie-knives, and all manner of cut-and-thrusi wcap.ma. Inhighways and by-ways. afoot and horseback. in stagecoacb, eteamboat, and raíl-car, alone, in groups, and in all eort of gatheiings, wherevrr you go, by daylight, twilight, or midnight, you find men preparedto protect, at all linzirds. "lite, fortune, and sar.ral honor," as our giandfathers said, wiih a fine 'rhetorical üourish.' when they took Mr. Buil, by the horas aud juet buckcd him off into ■salt water, to remind him that 'his march wat o'er the mountain wave.' and his 'home' acros the deep,' instead oi'being as he claimed, in our tresh clovor. But it is not only when abroad, that our Southern neiglibors are so equipped and take such paine to keep out of harm's way. At home, even wali doors as fast as bolts can hold theni. they areso tenacious of life that they can hardly go to bed tiil thev have fresh-primcd their rifles slung a bowie knife round thcir necks. and clapped abrace of pistols in their shirt 'pockete.- One would almost think, that, with such care 01 life, danger would keep at a reopectable distance and let them live on, and on, till they shouldoutUve the patriarchs themselves, those worthy planters they proless to imítate, at least that revered ;old man' who, though he had livied six score years and ten. had 'not attained unto the dnys of their pilgrimage.' But, after all, the great hunter of mankind is not oheaied out of his game, and, as ifexasperated bysuch andso many methods to take the prey out of the hand of the spoiler, he sharpens his wits and foils his foes with thoir own weapons, or, rather, Death, a sort of grandoverseer, sits. at leisure, on his pale horse, and watche8, with 'ghastly smiles,' his slaves, as they liU8ily mow down his harvest, and level. at a clip, what took him scores of years to cut off. Surely we do, in spite of crabbed dutibters, live in an 'age of improvement;' and if death's doings at the South are not evidence of the march of mind,' into eternity, then Uncle Toby's march before the Corporal wag no march at all, and carried nothing forward, not even in urgunient. The style in which they do things up at the South nota little puzzles some of our raw Jonathans who like to see into whys and whérefores of 'matters and things in general,' and feel uneasy asfish out of water, if they d n't know nearly is much about their neighbor's business as they do aboat their own. And, truty there is, in some things, such a difference between here and here that it is quite enough to povoke a stupid nnn's brains, and make an old fashioned philoso)her put his spectacles on, so much moredepends on getting uscd to a tliing than moet folks think iX Whiïst in Mississippi men are killed off" by cores in a year, here wc don't find half a dozen murdered in a whole centurj. We have been a County a hundred and eleven years. and, in allthnt time, who ever heardof a duelbeing lought among us? No man ever killed another here without being tried for itby an honest jury. and 'et, in all that long while, only three pereons ïave been murdered here, if the juries have told ie truth. The first of these three was97years go, and that was done by a slave, to get his (reeom, which he knew helonged to him; and the ast was 49 yeare since, by a crazy fellow, who ïad been such for years, and had been declared o by law, which shows that the people were full areful enotigh to look after such matters. And. ertainly, if we have had no more.it is not because ïere have not been people enough here to have falling out among themslves. now and then.- We have about 95,000 white people, real AnIo-Saxon8, in the County, and that is about a hird more than ihe whole State of Mississippi ïad in Í63J. Besides. for the last 50 years we ïave had, on an average, more than 64,000; and. 8yearsago, ovei 30,000, so that, on the score f numbers. if that was all that was wanted to lelp break the commandment, it stood but a poor