Very little news has reached our shores during the week,
and only one item of any interest has left them,—we mean the announcement, which is evidently Official, that the Govern- ment will not permit Mr. Laird's rams to leave the Mersey, and that they will be seized if it appears that there has been any violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act. The most im- portant item by far, if there were any reason to trust it, of the foreign intelligence, is the assertion that Mr. Jefferson Davis, after consultation with the Governors of some of the Southern States, has determined on calling out 500,000 negro troops, who are to receive for their services. at the end of the war their freedom and fifty acres of land each. We have pointed out elsewhere the grounds for doubting this wonderful revolution of policy in the Slave Power which means nothing but final and complete emancipation. It is, however, evidently credited by the only Confederate organ in England, The Index, which in its usual high treble of irrational and exaggerated passion, remarks, "The Confederate negro troops will be as much superior in steiadi- ness and effectiveness to the black levies of the' North as the Sepoys under European officers were to the mutinous hordes of IT' ana Sahib." It is difficult to understand how General Grant and General Banks resemble Nana Sahib, or why the negro troops who have behaved so gallantly under them should fight better for the men who surrender what they think a holy institution for their own safety, than for those who have always opposed its extension as the curse of the country. Perhaps, our contemporary thinks the grace of repentance so endearing that the slaves will prefer those who have abandoned the whip to those who never handled it, according to the detestable saying that
women prefer a reformed rake. Probably, however, the slaves will consider the danger of relapse, and think otherwise.
