Valley Spirit

The term loyalty has been so flippantly used by our Republican friends during the last five or six years that it may be profitable to inquire into its meaning. In monarchical governments the term "loyalty" is used to indicate fidelity or attachment to the person of the King or reigning sovereign. During our late war it was used by republican politicians and demagogues to denote support of the President of the United States, and unqualified acquiescence in all his ministerial acts. To doubt the wisdom of his policy was at once pronounced disloyalty, if not rank treason.--No one was considered loyal who failed to give his assent and support to all the acts of the President. This was the theory advanced by the leaders of the Republican party during the war and acquiesced in by the rank and file of the party all over the country.

But how is it now? A change seems to have come over the spirit of the dreams of these gentlemen. They still prate about loyalty as loudly as ever, but what was loyalty then is treason now, and what was treason then, through some mysterious process of transformation has become the most sublime loyalty! Support of the President then was proof sufficient of a man's patriotism, support of the President now is all the evidence needed to prove him a traitor.

The term "loyalty," if its use be allowable at all in this country, must mean fidelity to the Government of the United States, or in other words to the Constitution of the United States, the instrument upon which the government is founded, and without which it could not exist. As before observed, during the war our Republican friends contended that, the President being the representative of the Government, support of his policy and acts as the true test of loyalty, whilst the Democratic party adhered to the old fogy notion that the Constitution was higher than the President, and that a faithful observation of its provisions was the only rule by which a man's patriotism could be judged. Tried by either of these tests the Republican party will be found wanting. If fidelity to the President be the test then is it the most disloyal party that ever existed in this country, for no party ever displayed so much bitter and malignant hostility towards a Chief Magistrate of the nation as it to-day displays towards President Jackson. If fidelity to the Constitution be the true test, as contended for by the Democrats, then it is equally disloyal, because it is the declared purpose of its leaders to subvert and change that instrument by means of amendments, and because they have flagrantly violated one of its plainest provisions by denying representation in Congress to ten States of the American Union. If the Republican party is a loyal party, as it claims to be, we would like to know in what its loyalty consists?

Although the returns of the late election come in quite slowly, the political complexion of the next Congress can be ascertained almost with certainty. The popular interest having centered in the choice of Representatives we refer first to the House, the political status of which is given in the following table:

The States yet to elect Representatives in the Fortieth Congress, and the number of members to which they are entitled are as follows:

Estimating the result of the election in these States as that of the last Congressional election, excepting that in Kentucky, which recently chose a Democrat to fill the vacancy in the Sixth District occasioned by the resignation of Hon. Green Clay Smith (Republican), the grand result will be as follows:

This, of course, will give the Republicans a majority in the House and plenty to spare, so they will have everything their own way in the Fortieth, as they have now in the Thirty-ninth Congress.

In the United States Senate there are eleven Senators to be chosen this winter by the Legislatures of the following States, to wit:

Illinois, vice Lyman Trumbull, R.

Indiana, vice Henry Lane, R

Samuel C. Pomeroy, R.

Kansas, vice{ James H. Lane. R.

Maryland, vice John A. J. Creswell, R.

Missouri, vice R. Graiz Brown, R.

New Jersey, vice William Wright, D.

New York, vice Ira Harris, R.

Ohio, vice John Sherman, R.

Pennsylvania, vice Edgar Cowan, R.

Wisconsin, vice Timothy O. Howe, R.

*Deceased.

It is probable that, except in the case of Senator Cresswell, of Maryland, every Republican Senator in the above list will either be re-elected or replaced by a Radical; and on the other side, the seats of Edgar Cowan, of Pennsylvania, and the late William Wright, of New Jersey, will be filled by Radicals. Maryland of course, will elect a Conservative in place of John A. J. Creswell, providing that the Radicals in that State do not succeed by some hocus pocus arrangement in ousting the Conservative members of the Legislature who were chosen on Tuesday. Should this forecast prove correct the political complexion of the Senate will be as follows:

The gist, then, of the whole story is that for the next three years the Radicals will have complete control of the legislation in the House of Representatives, and of that in the Senate for a longer period. With them, therefore, the responsibility of the acts of Congress must rest, and the country will hold them accountable both for the wrong that they may do and the right that they may leave undone. We can only hope that, impressed with the grave responsibility now devolved upon them, they will manifest more regard for the real interests of the country, irrespective of their party, than they have done in the past. But we fear that this hope will prove vain.

The cotton crop of the United States is of the greatest importance, both in a commercial and financial point of view. It is so much capital to the nation at a time when it is needed to repair the damage of the past, and infuse life, confidence and animation into the future. The cotton statement of the Charleston Courier for November 1, estimates the crop for 1866-7 at a million and a half of bales as the maximum, and a million as the minimum. On the 1st of September the estimate was fixed at a higher figure. Then the maximum was placed at two millions of bales, and the minimum at a million and a half of bales. The difference between the two estimate is occasioned by circumstances effecting the growth and development of the cotton crop, and unforeseen calamities may still further reduce the estimate made at the beginning of the present month. The Courier] very properly remarks that no estimate is good except for the time when it is made, and continues:

The causes, however, of the present anxiety must give place to that uncertainty with regard to the future which must render cotton cultivation the most uncertain of human pursuits. Labor will form an element of so much importance that, until the competition between its relative cost in British India and the United States is determined, no just conclusion can be arrived at, on the subject of the ability of the United States to maintain such competition. Voluntary labor in British India previous to emancipation was much lower than enforced labor in the United States. Since emancipation the disparity has much increased.

The Southern Planter has, in fact, to sustain double competition: 1. From the East India Grower, where the cost of cultivation is limited from the lower price of labor; 2. From the manufacturers of woolen, linen, and silk fabrics, which are employed as substitute for cotton goods when the price of such goods is high in consequence of the advance of the raw material

The fact that there is a point where the price of cotton will limit the demand for the article, is beginning to challenge the attention of cotton growers, and to affect their action. People will substitute fabrics composed of wool flax and linen, mixed with cotton, when the latter articles are forced up to too high a figure. A recent writer upon this subject remarks that "the day that cotton is much higher in market than flax, silk or wool, is the time when these fabrics will successfully compete with cotton, and begin to take their place as part of the apparel of the people of the earth." The indications are that such a time is approaching, and hence the interest manifested in the cotton growing regions to adopt some system of labor by which the crop can be increased, and at the same time sold at a reduced price.

An investigation into the amount of cotton consumed in Europe shows that the rate of increase has been seriously misstated. The total consumption in thirty years has been seventy-four and a half millions of bales.--The increase from 1831 to 1840, was three and a third per cent. From the latter year to 1550, there was a decrease of one and a quarter percent. In the following ten years the increase was four and a third per cent. It will thus be seen that the yearly average increase in thirty years has been a fraction less than three per cent. This is but a trifling improvement when all the circumstances surrounding the case are taken into consideration.

The question, at what price cotton can be produced in the United States at the present time, naturally connects itself with the former view of the consumption of the article. On this point a writer in De Bow's Review for November remarks:

We think one thing, at least, will be conceded by all those who have had any experience in the cultivation of cotton, and that is unless those who make it can receive more remunerating prices than are now being paid, the production must rapidly decline, and none will be more ready to admit this than these who, having no knowledge of the mode of cultivation, have blindly rushed into the field with visions of the golden harvest they were to reap.--After deducting the three cent-per pound tax, which, of course, must come out of the pocket of the producer, and other expenses incident to the shipment, and sale of his cotton, but little is left to the planter as net gains at thirty cents per pound, when, by the way, is rather more than he can expect, with the present market. The highest quality will not be higher than what is styled in the market "low middling," or "good ordinary," for which, at the present rate, he could not expect more than 27 or 28 cents per pound or about 20 cents net, which can be but barely more than the cost of production.

The same person ignores the views of certain ignorant persons, "that a new and glorious era is opened to the South by the abolition of a wasteful and iniquitous system of labor, and with free and enlightened emigrant labor the South will send yearly to market twenty bales of cotton for every one heretofore seen," and concludes as follows:

Unless some new system does take the place of the one now existing the production of the country must greatly decrease, and some of us may yet live to see the day when pound of Southern cotton will be worth its weight in paper money, which, indeed would be no now sight.

Those who really desire the country the advance in material prosperity, must see the necessity of national repose, in order that the labor system of the South may be reorganized and the cotton crop raised again to its old standard of importance. If all the freedmen of the South were employed, the price of producing cotton could be reduced. This would increase the demand, and in that way both the grower and the country would be benefited. The Radicals prefer party to patriotism, and while they rule the people must suffer.--Age