Valley Spirit

The bill for the relief of the citizens of Chambersburg who lost their property by the burning of the town on the 30th day of July, 1864, is now the law of the State. It appropriates $500,000 to be distributed pro rata among the sufferers. The claims are to be adjudicated by three appraisers appointed by the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin county, who are not to be residents of Franklin county, and who are allowed sixty days in which to perform the duties of their appointment. On the claims thus ascertained the distribution is to be made. The property of corporations such as the Court House, Franklin Hall and Bank building, is excluded from the benefits of the bill. All exorbitant claims, bearing on their face evidence of fraud, are to be rejected entirely by the board of appraisers. This is a just provision and should serve as a warning to persons who may feel disposed to augment their claims above that of their actual loss.

The bill passed the Senate on Wednesday last, and was signed by the Governor on Thursday morning. It had passed the House the week previous, as our readers are aware. We regret to say that some Senators who had promised to support the bill, grew weak in the knees before it was brought to a final vote. It is really surprising to find how little imbued with the spirit of justice some men are towards their fellows. This is a measure so pre-eminently just and right that it seems to us passing strange that any man should hesitate for a moment of giving it support. Those Senators and Representatives who did stand by us in the hour of calamity and distress deserve well of this community, and their kind services in our behalf, we doubt not, will be ever gratefully remembered.

Without disparaging in the least the services of other members of the Legislature who supported our cause, we think the gratitude of our people is especially due to the Hon. Heister Clymer, of Berks. He has nobly and manfully stood by as us through ever phase of this controversy. From first to last he was ever found faithfully and consistently by our side, giving his voice and the might of his great influence in favor of indemnity to the despoiled people of the border. On the final passage of this bill in the Senate last Wednesday, when Senators were giving various reasons for their votes, Mr. Clymer sent a thrill through every generous heart in the Senate chamber by uttering the following brief sentence, in his usual earnest, nervous tone of voice: "Mr. Speaker--I vote for this bill because it is RIGHT."

The following is the final vote on the bill in each House:

SENATE:

YEAS--Messrs. Bigham, Clymer, Connell, Donovan, Glatz, Graham, Haines, Hall, Hopkins, Householder, Landon Latta, McConaughy, Nicholls, Randall, Ridgeway, Royer and Fleming, Speaker--18.

NAYS--Messrs. Beardslee, Browne, Cowles, Dunlap, Hoge, Lowry, Montgomery, Shoemaker, Walls, White and Worhtingon--12.

HOUSE:

YEAS--Messrs. Adaire, Adlum, Armstrong, Baker, Barr, Bemne, Brown, Cameron (York), Collins, Craig, Crosland, Danks, Davis, Dellaves, Donnelly, Early, Eldred, Freeborn, Ghegan, Glass, Grady, Harner, Headman, Herron, Hoffman, Hood, Houck, Humphreys, Josephs, Kerns, Kline, Koon, Kurtz, Lawrence, Lee, Long, McCreary, Markley, Marks, Mechling, Mully, Meyers, Missimer, Nelson, Osterhout, Pershing, Quay, Qyigley, Rhoads, Robinson, Rose, Ross, Rothbrock, Ruddleman, Satterthwait, Seller, Seybert, shaffer, Shenk, Shirk, Shuman, Slack, Sterner, Stumbaugh, Sturtebent, Subers, Thomas, Wallace, Watts, Weiser, Wingard, Woodward and Kelly, Speaker--72.

NAYS--Messrs. Allen, Barrington, Boyle, Calvin, Denues, Grinnell, Kinney, Mcaffee, McElroy, McKinley, McPherrin, Mann, Negley, Pennypacker, Pillow, Sharpless, Smith, Stehman, Tharp, Tyson, Waddell, Welsh and Whann--23.

A Republican Senator in Congress remarked to us a few days ago, that he considered the county in a more critical situation now than the first year of the rebellion. His remark was based on the revolutionary course of the radicals, who are now striving to their utmost to effect an entire change in our Republican system of Government, and the great danger of a collision with the French on the Rio Grande frontier. A foreign war at this time would be most unfortunate. In a financial point of view we are not in a condition to go to war with anybody, and physically we are not much better off. For the present our people, at least those who would be of any service to us in the field, have had a surfeit of bloodshed, and care not to embark in war for some time to come. Again, Congress is doing al it can to alienate the South from us, when a little generous legislation would bind the Southern people to the Union with hooks of steel. Suppose a war with France should come, and two or three hundred thousand Frenchmen be landed in the South, in the midst of a population we are doing our best to make hostile to us, might we not find a wolf scratching out our own vitals?

The course of the present congress is a practical insult to every man who took up arms to defend the Federal Government during the last war. That body announced that the war was only to be carried on to prevent a division of the Union. Now, when it is over, and the South are fairly on their knees begging to be restored to their suspended rights, Congress tells them that they are aliens--that the Union was divided notwithstanding the rebellion was put down, and that they are no longer in the Union. What an insult to the army! If the position of Congress be made the policy of the government it presents the strangest conditions of things the world ever saw. It ignores every pretended principle the war was fought for, and practically makes no point of contest the most stupendous lie ever invented. The army thought, acted, fought upon and for, a lie. Congress is now trying to do by peaceful means, and by this we mean corrupt and unconstitutional legislation, what all the power of the South in four years of war failed to accomplish--divide the Union and change out whole system of government. Whether they can succeeded the people will determine.

The government of the county is now controlled and managed by irresponsible and corrupt Committees. Stevens' Committee of fifteen is as much Directory as that which had the control of France during part of her revolutionary period. Its birth had not even the respectability of Congress, if that body can now make anything respectable. It was begotten in a caucus, where the most important measures of government are now originated. The Rump Congress governs without the President. The Constitution makes him part of the legislative power of the government, but as he would be, a clog to the plans of the revolutionary Directory they get along without him. This may be a convenient arrangement for wicked men, but one whereby the country will suffer. The conspirators against the life of the nation desire to make everything pay tribute to New England and her ideas.

One of their favorite projects is to turn over to the negro all the benefits of the war. He is suddenly to be clothed with all the privileges of American citizenship, without understanding more of its duties than an oyster knows of the fashions. But he is good enough to control white voters and place all power in the hands of the Directory. The greatest outrage of the century was giving the negroes of the District of Columbia the right to vote, against the expressed will of the people. It violates the great American doctrine, that the will of the constituent should govern the representative. When Congress acts for the district the members are as much the representatives of its people as they are at other times of their immediate constituents in the States. This bill in relation to the District is only and opening wedge; it will soon be extended to the States, and negro suffrage will be crowded down the throats of the people wherever the authority of the Directory can reach. When this is done we will have a strong consolidation, instead of a republican form of government.

Part of their plan is to amend the Constitution of the United States in such manner that it will not resemble in matter or form the instrument made by our fathers. It will be in a worse condition than the knife which had two new blades and three new handles. Seventy-one amendments have already been proposed, of which sixty-eight are to benefit the negro in some way or others. If they shall be adopted ours may well be called a black man's government. One of the changes is to give Congress entire political control over all the States, which makes them but provinces to the central power at Washington.

There is but one thing that can save the country at this crisis--the firmness and honesty of Andrew Jackson. Let him throw himself into the breach and rescue the republic; then appeal to the people as did Andrew Jackson when he slew the money-headed monster, and our life upon it he will be sustained. The people of this country will never consent that the fruits of a war which was waged to save the Union, shall be used by bad men to destroy it.

In a debate in the Rump Senate, on the 23rd ult., upon the question of the extension of the powers of this Bureau, Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, said:

"I shall enter into no computation of the cost which the country has already incurred in the support of that bureau. One thing we know, that hundreds of thousands of the negro race have been supported out of the Treasury of the United States, and the white people of this country are taxed to pay that expense. For the first time in the history of the country has the thing occurred that the great mass of the people have been taxed to support in idleness a class of people too lazy and too worthless to support themselves. Look around at these galleries at any time in the day, and you can see the beneficiaries of this bureau crowding your galleries and listening to the debates of this body. How many of the honest, hardworking white young men of this country are there who can afford to come to the city of Washington and sit day after day, week after week, and month after month, listening to your deliberations? They can not afford to do it; but, under the protective care of this Freedmen's bureau, your galleries can be crowded every day with negroes, listening to your deliberations, doing nothing to support themselves, but being supported out of the taxes levied upon the white people of the country."

Mr. S. makes the following estimate and cost of sustaining this Free Nigger Bureau; under the bill for enlarging its boundaries:

Seven millions four hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars of the twelve millions called for by the chief overseer of the new system of slavery, for white officers and the balance for contingencies, rents, fuel, stationary, carriage hire, home feed and stealings!!

And in addition

For the VALLEY SPIRIT,

MESSERS. EDITORS:--Our citizens have all a right to congratulate themselves, for the generous favor done by our States Legislature in making an appropriation to the sufferers by the fire. "A friend in need is a friend indeed." Such to our poor burned up town has been the present Legislature. All thanks to every member of that body, who supported and sided in the passage of the Relief Bill.

That our Bill is beyond all peradventure, a fixed fact, no one can doubt, and, for a dead certainty, each one of us can count upon pocketing, in a very short his pro portionate share. The Bill provides that the commissioners to adjust the claims, shall complete their work within sixty days. And as the commissioners will be appointed on the twenty-sixth inst., we will in all probability, receive our money sometime during the month of April. Among other provisions in the Bill, there is one, to which we desire more especially, at this time, to call the attention of our citizens who claim some of the benefits thereof. It is that clause or provision, which refers to the manner of getting up, and preparing the bills of articles lost and destroyed; or rather to the safeguards and restrictions of the same, against those who might feel disposed to swell their claims above and beyond the actual losses. The provision reads as follows: "That if it shall be established that any person shall present a false statement in part or in whole for property either not possessed or not destroyed, or in excess of just valuation with the intent to defraud, the petition of such person shall be dismissed without any allowances whatever.