have confirmed the opinion which has very
generally been entertained, that the Americans would speedily have a
line of steamers on the ocean superior in speed, comfort, and elegance
to those of the Cunard Company which have hitherto enjoyed so high a
reputation.--Mr. E. GEORGE SQUIER, U. S. Charge near the government of
Nicaragua, has returned to this country on a brief visit. We learn that
he has made a very full record of his observations upon the country in
which he has been residing, and that very volumnious papers from him on
the subject are in possession of the State Department. It is to be hoped
that they may be given to the public.--The initial steps have been taken
in Virginia toward an enterprise of decided importance to the southern
states if it should be carried out: it is nothing less than the
establishment of direct intercourse by a line of steamers between some
southern port and Liverpool, for the export of cotton and other articles
of southern growth, and for the transmission of southern correspondence,
&c. The meeting of delegates was held at Old Point on the 4th of July,
and committees were appointed to make proper representations on the
subject to Congress and the state Legislature, and to take such other
steps as they might deem essential.--A convention was held at Syracuse
of persons favorable to maintaining the existing Free School System of
the State of New York. The necessity for such action grows out of the
fact that the principle is to be submitted to the popular suffrage in
November. The Legislature of 1848 passed a law making education in the
common schools of the state absolutely free to all the children who
might choose to attend, making the law dependent for its validity on its
adoption by the people. Accordingly it was submitted to them in
November, 1848, and was sanctioned by a majority of over 90,000. It
accordingly went into effect. At the last session of the Legislature,
however, petitions were sent in, in great numbers, some of them praying
for the entire repeal of the law, and others for its essential
modification. The opponents of the law resisted the principle that
property should be taxed for purposes of education, inasmuch as men of
property would thus be compelled to pay for educating children not their
own. Others objected mainly to details of the law, and to the injurious
effect of the established mode of collecting the rate bills. The two
branches of the Legislature not being