to an intention to use the army for
the crushing of the working-men. There have been few better speeches in
the Senate in recent times than Senator Hawley's temperate but cutting
reply to these pseudo-friends of labor. It affords sufficient evidence,
if any were wanting, that the true friends of the working-men are those
who have the courage of their convictions, even when to utter them may
afford opportunity for misrepresentation and abuse.

* * * * *

The report of a recent attempt to wreck a train on the Maine Central
Railroad is not so startling as it would be were this species of crime
of less frequent occurrence; but it is noteworthy as being the sixth
attempt of the kind at the same place within a few years. It is very
fortunate that so many of these dastardly efforts to bring innocent
people to destruction prove futile. In fact it is comparatively seldom
that the boldest attempts at train-wrecking result in loss of life. The
awful possibilities, however, which lie within the hands of the
train-wrecker suggest most forcibly that this crime should be treated
with unusual severity. The person who would indiscriminately bring the
passengers of a moving train to death must invariably, if sane, be a
criminal of the darkest dye. Murder of an individual, even when coming
within the first degree, is not often without some particular
aggravation on the part of the victim. But train-wrecking must always be
the result of the purest malice,--of diabolism unalloyed. No palliating
circumstance ever suggests itself. The villain attempts to kill not one
who has involved himself in a quarrel with him, but peaceable,
unsuspecting men, women, and children, without distinction. And attempts
of this kind have become so frequent, and the crime is at once so
cowardly, so insidious, and so dastardly, that no pains to apprehend the
villain can ever be too great, nor can any penalty that is allowed for
any crime be too severe for this. If capital punishment is to be on our
statute books for anything, it should certainly be for the
train-wrecker. Let there be a law which shall with certainty bring to
the hangman's noose every person who makes even an attempt to destroy a
moving train, and this fiendish crime may be less frequent than it now
is.

HISTORICAL RECORD.

March 19.--Under this date Mayor Chapman, chairman of the Committee on
Invitation for the Centennial Celebration at Portland, Maine, w