The American Congress has adjourned without passing the Force Bill,
which is therefore lost. In the next Congress the House of Representatives will be democratic, and will not hear of such Bills. The measure was a bad compromise between a desire to place the South under a strong government, and the desire that such government should be strictly elective. Under its pro- visions, resistance to any United States law was punishable with two years' imprisonment and a fine of £1,000, and interference with an election with ten years' imprisonment and a fine of £2,000. The President, moreover, was allowed in four States, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and Arkansas, to suspend the Habeas Corpus at discretion. The President would probably have used these powers honestly for the suppression of violence and illegality, but the Carpet-baggers would not, and the Republicans were of course suspected of a plot to control the Presidential elections. The
measure has done the party infinitely more harm than a law authorising the President to declare any State in rebellion, to suspend its constitutional existenc,?, and to govern it by a just but military administration. No plot to influence elections could have been concealed under such a law, and order might have been secured without setting one party above another. As it is, the Democrath in Congress will leave the States to themselves, and the Whites will either drive the Blacks from the polls, or com- mence what may become a civil war.
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