Staunton Spectator

The whole object of the Radicals North and South is to secure, by the action of Congress and of Southern State Conventions, the domination of the Radical party, regardless of right, justice and constitutional provisions. They will adopt any device to effect their object, one of which is the device to seduce white men in the South to co-operate with the negroes to enable them to rule the great body of the whites, --The Southern mongrel conventions in the South, says the Dispatch, are "considering a proposition for this purpose -- applicants for self-degradation are invited to come forward, confess to a committee, and avow their loyalty to reconstruction and Radicalism, and, no matter what their past offences, Congress is to be informed of their "conversion," and will at once make them as good as an African and clothe them with all the dignity and immunity enjoyed by that "man and brother." How many Virginians may enter upon that path of enduring infamy to themselves and their posterity remains to be seen!

In the mean time the people of Virginia should be hopeful and firm; trusting to the ultimate triumph of justice, and right, and that predominance of the superior race which can alone save the State from irretrievable ruin and degradation. Let it be remembered that, no community can hope for such a triumph unless they themselves preserve their honor, their virtue, and their unfaltering devotion to true loyalty to their creator, their country, and their fellow-men."

If there was a time when the virtue of economy should be practised now is that time. The people of the South are now in straitened circumstances, pecuniarily as well as politically, and they should govern their conduct accordingly. As the Petersburg Index says, "the sooner our people realize their poverty, and act upon it, the better. We know of those in our community whose lives seem to be one long chain of monetary vexations, but daily preside at tables groaning under superfluous dishes, and surrounded by families decked in the most costly, extravagant, and unnecessary adornments. --These things must be changed. Our people must appreciate their poverty. Hard times are upon us, and we must adapt our living to the times. Luxuries should not be permitted in our homes. Discard all that is unnecessary and useless. Cease to borrow money. Live within your income. Buy nothing on credit. Lay aside the superfluities of life. By adopting these rules, we may be enabled to weather the storm that is upon us. It may be that all our efforts shall fail. If so, ours will be the consolation of having done our full duty. Unless our people contract their expense within the narrowest limits, their financial ruin is an established fact. These are not the times for squandering and extravagance. RIGID ECONOMY should be the motto of every household."

The New York World publishes the substance of a long conversation had with the President by its Washington correspondent. We have space for only a few extracts. They will show, however, that the President is firm in the maintenance of his constitutional principles, and determined to perform the duties imposed upon him by the constitution.

He says that a decided change has taken place in the sentiments of the Northern people, and adds:

"One who held fast to a principle when a majority was arrayed against him is not likely to loosen his hold upon it when so much of the pressure has been removed."

He says

"The Radicals in Congress are desperate. They have made of that body a political monstrosity. While they will seek to hide their deformities with the cloak of patriotism, or strive to distract public attention from them by specious manoeuvres, they are becoming more and more convinced that the people see through it all. Having gone farther than they intended-- so far that they have overleaped all bounds save those of party and ambition -- retreat would be equivalent to hari kari. They keep on now, hoping to obtain by conquest in the South this year a power more than equivalent to their loss of prestige in the North. Perhap they trust by such a conquest to awe and subdue a majority in the north whom they are failing to lead. This extreme party, which is represented by men like Mr. Bingham, Mr. Boutwell, and Senator Sumner, is in a worse dilemma than ever party was before in the Republic."

In reference to the action of Congress on the New Reconstruction Bill which we published last week, and which the Lower House of Congress passed, on Tuesday last, by a vote of 123 to 45, the President says:

" These measures are of course revolutionary. The arguments used to defend them are clearly as fallacious as the assertion that black is white would be. A proposition to deprive, by mere act of Congress, the President of the United States of any portion of the authority vested in him as Commander in-Chief of the Army and Navy is a proposal to do direct violence to the Constitution." * * * * * *

" This bill assumes a right of Congress to do away with the President altogether, if it chooses, and make itself executor as well as legislator for the Government. Could any assumption be more arrogant, more dangerous and destructive in its tendency?" * * * *

"The attitude of the Executive has ever been one of defence or resistance. It is his plain, simple office, while seeing that all laws are put in force that conform to the Constitution, to see that no law obtains, so far as his veto or authority can prevent it from obtaining which does not conform to it. I repeat that he is obliged by his Solemn oath to defend that instrument from any and every assailment. "

In allusion to the bill which passed the Lower House of Congress two weeks since, requiring a majority of two-thirds of the Supreme Court to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional, he says:

"The Supreme Court is as much a separate and distinct branch of the Government as Congress or the Executive. What right has Congress to usurp the prerogative of the people in this case more than in the other?" * * *

"A majority of judges have always prevailed in all courts in England, France, and elsewhere, as well as in the United States. This is an attempt to strip the judicial branch of the Government of a right which it is competent to define and maintain."

In alluding again to the New Reconstruction Bill, he says:

"As I explained at the commencement, this so-called reconstruction bill is destined, if carried into effect, so as to increase and consolidate the military tyranny which has already come nigh to ruin the southern states, that no body of legislators not run nearly wild with a party idea could think of forcing it through."

After depicting the ruin the Radical party is bringing upon the country, he says:

"The measures of that party will, in my judgment, tend to repress for an indefinite period such a development of the resources of the south as had been accomplished before the war. It is grinding out and discouraging the property-holding and intelligent class of citizens to place all power, the whole conduct of affairs, in the hands of the negroes and the few native whites and northern adventurers who would share it with them."

"A revolution, such as these headlong spirits seem determined to precipitate, may have, if it is suffered to go on, an effect more damaging than that of the last civil war."

On the correspondent's understanding that it had been understood that the President had expressed his purpose to excercise all the authority vested in him by the constitution to repel these revolutionary measures, he said:

"The President," said Mr. Johnson, with a resolute gesture, has already expressed his intention to perform his duty. As to what that duty may involve ---" (laying his hand lightly on the table and drumming his fingers during the pause) "it would be rather premature, just now, even to suggest. We will leave special measures for special occasions when they arise. I have confidence in the good sense of the army, and certainly I believe in the people. I believe in the young men; they will not permit a revolution to be accomplished, even though," added the President, in a serious though not at all threatening tone, "it might be necessary for the people to take the matter into their own hand."

From a long editorial of the Enquirer and Examiner, we take the following extract:

"It is the duty of the people of Virginia at once to take the ground that no order, ordinance, act, law, or deed done by the representatives of the secret negro leagues, whether in or out of Convention, shall be obeyed, respected, or heeded, unless under the compulsion of the fixed bayonets of the Federal soldiery. We must in no way, by indifference or implication, let the idea effect a lodgment upon the Northern mind that we will never submit to the rule of the negro. This crime against civilization which the bayonet has been invoked to uphold, nothing but the bayonet must enforce. Whenever that is withdrawn, it is the duty of the white man at once to assert and make good at all hazards the prerogatives of his race as rightfully the dominant one in the South. The work of such creatures as Underwood, Hunnicutt, Lindsey, and Bayne, must be swept away the very instant the soldier's inglorious duty of propping up a negro power terminates.

There must be no tribute to black Caesars (or Pompeys either) which the Soldier does not compel with his loaded musket at the breast of his disarmed white brother of the South. Black rulers, magistrates, legislators, and tax gatherers, must move with their obsequious body guards of Federal soldiers, in the old Dominion. Never shall it be said that the descendants of Washington, Henry, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and a host of other great Virginians submitted to be ruled by indicted incendiaries, and black and brown barbarians. The pages of history are brilliant with noble examples of the patient fortitude of a defeated people, proving in the end more than a match for the malignant and inhuman insults and outrages of their conquerors. The bayonet ruled in Hungary for twenty years, the people of that heroic nation never voluntarily surrendering a right, and at last compelled a baffled tyrant to give them all which they claimed. The Venetians proudly boast that, during more than half a century of Austrian rule, they never compromised their honor by a single act of voluntary submission to the will of the conqueror, and deliverance came to them at last. And none of these oppressed nations ever had thrust upon them by their conquerors a degradation half as infamous as negro rule, --the filthy, polluting, barbarous supremacy of an inferior and despised race, intended by God to be slaves."