COMMERCIAL REGULATIONS.

I. THE CONFISCATION ACT OF AUGUST, 1861. II. RESULTS OF CONFISCATION ACT. III. COMMERCIAL TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND ITALY. IV. FREE IMPORTATIONS INTO FRANCE. V. TREATY BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE. VI. TREATY WITH TURKEY. VII. TREATY BETWEEN RUSSIA AND CHINA. VIII. DECISIONS OF THE SECRETARY of the TREASURY ON HOLLOW WARE-WOOLLEN CARD CLOTH-PRINted Cotton Handkerchiefs.

AN ACT TO CONFISCATE PROPERTY USED FOR INSURRECTIONARY PURPOSES.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That if, during the present or any future insurrection against the government of the United States, after the President of the United States shall have declared, by proclamation, that the laws of the United States are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the power vested in the marshals by law, any person or persons, his, her or their agent, attorney or employee, shall purchase or acquire, sell or give, any property of whatsoever kind or description, with intent to use or employ the same, or suffer the same to be used or employed, in aiding, abetting or promoting such insurrection or resistance to the laws, or any person or persons engaged therein; or if any person or persons, being the owner or owners of any such property, shall knowingly use or employ, or consent to the use or employment of the same as aforesaid, all such property is hereby declared to be lawful subject of prize and capture wherever found; and it shall be the duty of the President of the United States to cause the same to be seized, confiscated and condemned.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That such prizes and capture shall be condemned in the district or circuit court of the United States having jurisdiction of the amount, or in admiralty in any district in which the same may be seized, or into which they may be taken and proceedings first instituted.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That the Attorney-General, or any District Attorney of the United States in which said property may at the time be, may institute the proceedings of condemnation, and in such case they shall be wholly for the benefit of the United States; or any person may file an information with such attorney, in which case the proceedings shall be for the use of such informer and the United States in equal parts. SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That whenever hereafter, during the present insurrection against the government of the United States, any person claimed to be held to labor or service under the law of any State shall be required or permitted by the person to whom such labor or service is claimed to be due, or by the lawful agent of such person, to take up arms against the United States, or shall be required or permitted by the person to whom such labor or service is claimed to be due, or his lawful agent, to work to be employed in or upon any fort, navy yard, dock, armory, ship, entrenchment, or in any military or naval service whatsoever, against the government and lawful authority of the United States, then and in every such case the person to whom such labor or service is claimed to be due, shall forfeit his claim to such labor, any law of the State or of the United States to the contrary notwithstanding. And

whenever thereafter the person claiming such labor or service shall seek to enforce his claim, it shall be a full and sufficient answer to such claim that the person whose service or labor is claimed had been employed in hostile service against the government of the United States, contrary to the provisions of this act.

Approved, August 6, 1861.

CONFISCATION OF VESSELS.

The seizure of vessels at New-York and other Northern ports, under the new confiscation act, still continues. All the vessels taken are first libelled, then confiscated, and will be finally sold to the highest bidder. Some of these vessels were loading with cargoes for foreign ports. The government, it is stated, will not claim their cargoes, (unless it should be proved that they were intended to be shipped to Southern ports,) and the owners will be afforded every facility for their removal.

In case of most of the seizures but a small part, say one-fourth of the vessel, belongs to parties in the seceded States. The three-fourths owners, resident in the North, will bid in the vessels, and, as the Secretary of the Treasury has discretionary powers by the act, he will undoubtedly remit the amount paid for shares previously owned by the bidders-in, and accept only the amount due for the portion of the vessel claimed by South

ern owners.

The Southern owners can, of course, have no claim upon the Northern buyers, as the act of Congress confiscates their property. The South is thus likely to be cut off from any ownership in a large number of vessels, and Northern shipowners will have an opportunity of adding to their property at a considerable rate, considering the probable amount which will be invested under the confiscation sale.

With regard to the transferred vessels, it is believed that there will be no special difficulty in establishing the illegality of the transfers. The federal government will not be likely to recognise powers of attorney issued by the rebels, particularly when they were issued for the purpose of attempting to nullify a law enacted by Congress, and to avoid the confiscation which the act of Congress and the proclamation of the President decree.

COMMERCIAL TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND ITALY.

The Pungola of Milan gives the following details concerning the treaty of commerce now in course of negotiation between France and Italy: Absolute reciprocity in commerce and navigation, even in the coasting trade. Perfect equality for vessels as regards tonnage, pilotage and quarantine dues, &c.; also for loading and unloading cargoes in port, the use of docks &c. Agricultural and manufactured productions of all countries to be imported by French and Italian vessels without any differential dues being imposed. The productions of the two countries, exported or imported from one to the other, to enjoy the privileges accorded to those of the most favored nations. Perfect equalities of duties in the coral and other fisheries. All favors which may hereafter be accorded to any nation by either power, is to be accorded to the other. The reduced import duties on certain articles granted by preceding treaties to be extended to rice, flax and hemp tissues, salt meat, &c. The reductions

accorded to Belgium by the recent treaty to be extended to Italy. Abolition of the certificate of origin in the event of direct imports. Italian securities to be negotiated in the Bourse of Paris, and those of France in the Bourses of Italy. Abandonment of all taxes and charges whatever in case of shipwreck, also of all transit dues.

TREATY BETWEEN RUSSIA AND CHINA.

The Delhi Gazette of June 27th gives the following as authentic: The Ambassador of the King of Kokan arrived in Cabul on the 5th, on his way to Peshawur, and was received very warmly in Durbar by the Ameer. He (the ambassador) informed the Ameer that he was going with certain proposals to the British authorities which had relation to news received at Kokan, to the effect that a treaty had been concluded between the Emperor of Russia and the Emperor of China, by which the Russians have pledged themselves to protect and hold seven cities belonging to China, situated near the boundaries of Yarcund Kashkur, and to occupy the same by an armed military force. The Russians have also agreed to assist the Chinese with troops, if necessary, against the British and Kokanees. It seems that the Emperor of China had written to the Czar to say that the British had taken some of his places near Hindostan, and were intending to come upon others; and his Celestial Majesty having received a very favorable answer to his letter from Russia was the cause of the treaty being concluded.

FREE IMPORTATIONS.

The Chamber of Commerce of Boulogne have published a notice calling particular attention to the liberal dispositions of the Circular, No. 781, just issued by the French Custom House, in accordance with which French subjects returning into France, or foreigners settling there, are allowed to import all articles of personal and domestic use, such as clothing, house-furniture, musical instruments, books, &c., free of duty. Agricultural implements, tools and mechanical appliances may also be imported free of duty by persons intending to employ them, and students' materials and marriage outfits are also to be exempt from duty.

THE ANGLO-FRENCH COMMERCIAL TREATY.

The Paris correspondent of the London Times, writing in September, says: Now that the first of October is approaching, the term at which the treaty of commerce with England is to be carried into full execution, the shopkeepers in Paris who deal in cotton goods are reducing their prices to a figure quite unprecedented. They fear, it is said, that the French market will be overstocked with British manufactures. Every Englishman they perceive in any public place they imagine to be a manufacturer come to compete with and undersell them. A Rouen paper states that the hotels in that town are filled with English merchants and manufacturers, come to make sales of their produce for the 1st of October, the period when a variety of British merchandise will be admitted into France on the payment of a duty of 15 per cent. ad valorem. That paper adds that the prices demanded by the English dealers are so mod

together by the worthy and venerated president of the latter, an active member of long standing of the former.

If a profession were required of a new member, I could make mine with reference to trade, and to that struggle in which our country is engaged and which signally affects our commerce, in a very few words.

I am by conviction, sympathy and all the results of observation and study, an unwavering Union man. I believe that commerce is the handmaid of civilization, and that men are inherently exchanging beings; I am in favor of the freest possible exchange, of unshackled trade; I know that one of the characteristics of modern progress is the almost universal establishment of free trade within each country ruled by one government; I believe that without the Union civil liberty will not be maintained, and I know that in modern history, ever since the downfall of antiquity, civil, and, in a great measure, even religious, liberty have gone hand in hand with commerce; and I know that when commerce suffers, that which presents itself to the less observing as a relief nearest at hand proves frequently the merest palliative-in economy as in medicine. War disturbs exchanging traffic, indeed, but every peace on that account is not a remedy. Many a peace recorded in history, ancient as well as modern, has proved a scourge more dire than the war it was intended to close. There is nothing great without its sacrifice, and commerce is not exempted from this universal law, any more than religion, science, liberty, the arts, or that civilization which comprehends them all.

We have civil war in our country-sad for all of us-and bitter for those who wantonly plunged her into this contest; for whatever its issue may be, one thing seems to be beyond all doubt-neither cotton nor slavery will come forth from this war as they went into it. The royal purple of the one will be rumpled, perhaps rent, and the divinity of the other will appear somewhat shorn and paled.

Be the end of the war what it may, the bankers and merchants of New-York, this Chamber and the capitalists, deserve the warmest acknowledgments of every patriot, and to take a much more confined view, of every economist, for having bravely supported the active and able Secretary of the Treasury in his directness of purpose and candor of conduct, when lately he was in the midst of us on his momentous errand to obtain a large portion of the means wherewith to carry on our just and conservative war, which has been forced upon us and is now necessary, even in a purely commercial point of view.

It is true, indeed, that those who are now in arms against their own country have proclaimed the desire of establishing free trade as one of the causes-an economical reason for an insurrection which commenced with the setting aside of the elements of morals, the stepping over the principles of honor, and the breaking of those oaths which are held by men most sacred; and, on the other hand, it is true that the United States have enacted an untoward tariff; but has the revolted portion of the country shown itself in former times, and does it show itself even now, frankly and plainly for free trade? The sugar interest of Louisiana tells us no. Had it ever been candidly in favor of internal free trade? The river tonnage duty, repeatedly asked for by men from that portion, would surely not have promoted free domestic traffic. If ever this insurrection should come victoriously to settle down into an acknowledged new state of things, would it not break up the free traffic and unhampered exchange in the territory of the Union, which is the largest portion of

K

the whole peopled northern continent-that free trade within the country for which Germany toilsomely labors, and which, permit me to repeat it, is one of the cheering characteristics of modern progress?

Nature gave us a land abounding in all the means of sustaining life and industry-food and fuel; she cast a network of fluvial high roads over the whole. Our history is marked by no feature more distinctly than by the early complete freedom of river navigation, for which other nations have struggled in vain for many long centuries; and this insurrection, with a federal confession of judgment, steps in and means to snap the silver thread. The Mississippi belongs to you, sir, as much as to any man in Louisiana, and it is mine as much as it is yours. It belongs to the country by divine right, if jus divinum ever existed in any case; and let us trust in that God the country will never allow it to be wrested from us. Every consideration, with the consciousness of a high mission imposed upon us by our Maker to that of the commonest economy, urges us to hold fast to the unstinted freedom of our fluvial and all other communication. Let us first re-establish complete free trade within our whole domain, and afterwards let every one who candidly believes in the blessings of international free trade see to that.

Important as the topic of free trade doubtless is proved to be by the recent history of civilized nations, and by the development of all exchange, there is, nevertheless, a principle which every economist and publicist acknowledges as of far greater importance for production and exchange for commerce in its evident and its narrowed spheres-it is the simple fact that the instability of the country's polity affects production and exchange far more than an injudicious policy, plague or conquest. Let the right of secession-as it has almost farcically been called-be established; let American polities be considered as confederacies of States merely pieced or huddled together without a pervading and comprehensive national element, (an effete type of polity belonging to a period long passed in the political progress of our race,) and, sir, we may as well close the doors of our Chamber, and you may save yourself the trouble of presiding over us. I say what I literally mean.

The right of secession once acknowledged would lead to a number of chartered States, following the pattern held up by the insurgents, which brings small States, proud of an imaginary sovereignty, into contact just sufficient to produce jarring and contest, and to prevent organic harmony. The history of all pure or real confederacies is uninviting, frequently appalling, whether regarded in a general point of view or with reference to production and wealth alone. To such a supposed state of things our commerce would cease to be an organic branch of civilization, and sink to the short-sighted, selfish extorting which constitutes the trading of all lawless countries, be the lawlessness caused by the despotism of the many, the heartless arrogance of the few or the tyranny of one.

As men of duty and honor, as patriots, as merchants and men of industry, as lovers of freedom and civilization, as men who know that great and constant accumulation of wealth is requisite for modern civilization, as men who are determined to do right and wish to act nobly, let us stand by our country and see that this gigantic, sanguinary absurdity be crushed or driven from every corner of the soil.

Accept, sir, the sentiments of my highest regard, with which I am your very obedient servant. FRANCIS LIEBER. TO PELATIAH PERIT, President of the Chamber of Commerce.