The degree to which a vindictive and malignant opposition to every thing for the sake of ‘the party’ can be carried, has been well illustrated in the amount and variety of slander which has been heaped by the Southern-rights, sympathizing Democratic press on the efforts of those noble-hearted women who have endeavored to do something to alleviate the condition of the thousands of contrabands, who are many without clothes, employment, or the slightest idea of what they are to do.  It would be hard to imagine any thing more harmless or more perfectly free from any thing like sinister or selfish motives than have been the conduct and motives of the noble women who have assumed this mission.  Florence Nightingale undertook nothing nobler; and the world will some day recognize the deserts of those who strove against every obstacle to relieve the sufferings and enlighten the ignorance of the blacks—­among whom were thousands of women and little children.  Such being the literal truth, what does the reader think of such a paragraph as the following, which we find going the rounds of the Boston Courier and other journals of the same political faith?

’On dit, that some of the schoolmarms who went to South-Carolina several weeks ago, are not so intent upon ’teaching the young ideas how to shoot,’ as upon flirting with the officers, in a manner not entirely consistent with morality.  General Hunter is going to send some of the misbehaving misses home.’

If there is a loathsome, cowardly, infamous phrase, it is that of on dit, ‘they say,’ ‘it is said,’ when used to assail the virtue of women—­above all, of women engaged in such a cause as that in question.  We believe in our heart, this whole story to be a slander of the meanest description possible—­a piece of as dirty innuendo as ever disgraced a Democratic paper.  The spirit of the viper is apparent in every line of it.  Yet it is in perfect keeping with the storm of abuse and falsehood which has been heaped on these ‘contraband’ missionaries, teachers, and nurses, since they went their way.  They have been accused of pilfering, of lying, of doing nothing, of corrupting the blacks, of going out only to speculate, and, as might have been expected, we have at last the unfailing resort of the lying coward—­a dirty hint as to breaking the seventh commandment—­all according to the devilish old Jesuit precept of, ’Calumniare fortiter aliquis koerebit’—­’Slander boldly, something will be sure to stick.’  And to such a depth of degradation—­to the hinting away the characters of young ladies because they try to teach the poor contrabands—­can men descend ’for the sake of the party’!

* * * * *

Of late years, those soundest of philanthropists, the men of common-sense who labor unweariedly to facilitate exchanges between civilized nations, have endeavored to promote in every possible manner the adoption of the same system of currency, weights and measures among civilized nations.  It has been accepted as a rule beyond all debate, that if such mediums of business could be adopted—­nay, if a common language even were in use, industry would receive an incalculable impulse, and the production of capital be enormously increased.