22 APRIL 1865, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE topic of the week has been the attitude of the North. The great democracy has come well out of its hour of supreme trial. Through four long years of defeat, and discouragement, and feverish effort, amidst the execrations of its foes and the forebodings of many of its friends, the Republic has fought on, opposing to the superior organization of an oligarchy the strength which springs of freedom, and meeting incessant failure with the Anglo-Saxon persistence which the world mistakes for vanity. And now the game is won, and in its first hour of triumph, with the smoke still hovering over the field and the lists of its dead not yet made up, it is singing psalms to God, promising peace to all mankind, proclaiming freedom to all slaves, and crying to its rulers to issue complete and unpurehased amnesties. The emotion may not last, though we think it will, but the future of a people whose uncalculating emotion in the hour of defeat is to boast of their invincibility, and in the moment of triumph to ask pardon for their foes, must be a grand one. Since the men of the barricades shot their comrades for plundering, democracy has given no sign so full of promise as the conduct of the American people after the fall of Richmond.