The American news received during the week is only important
in this, that General Beauregard does not intend to assume the offensive. By the latest accounts he was fortifying himself at Fairfax, and bringing his army into thorough control, a task all the more easy be- cause his victory has confirmed the confidence felt in his skill and courage. On the other side, General McClellan is endeavouring strenuously to reorganize his force, and as a beginning has ordered the officers to keep with their men instead of " loafing" about the bars of the Washington and Alexandria hotels. No serious ques- tion of compromise is yet entertained, but the financiers of the Union are puzzled to raise the necessary funds. They have placed a tax of three per cent. upon incomes over 150/. a year, and raised their tariff to a preposterous height, the new duty on wine, for example, amounting to fifty per cent. 'ad valorem. Glorious days for the smugglers, and the makers of " liiger" beer, which under taxation of this sort will become the substitute for wine ! With a land fron- tier, of some three thousand miles, a large vine-growing territory, heavy stocks already in the country, and a national passion for spirits, a tax of this sort can produce nothing. It will be bitterly felt in France, where the North counts on allies, while it irritates the English dealers in money, who see in wild legislation of this kind new reason to distrast the soundness of American loans. If the North is wrecked, it will be on the rock of a radi- cally bad finance. Pending the reorganization of the army, the Northern editors amuse themselves by whistling away their defeat, and are now quite confident that Beauregard was in full retreat when an unaccountable panic among the artillery hones induced the Northern army to retire on its own supports. The loss also has dwindled down to some hundred and fifty men, though, at the same time, some dozens of " masked batteries" were carried by the bayonet, with "a grand and terrible courage." The object of all this trash is not very evident, as the papers at first were frank enough, and we imagine it is simply the recoil from the first unrea- sonable panic. It is the unregulated character of American emotion, rather than its direction, which so keenly annoys all Englishmen.
