there is nothing in view but commercial stagnation and general poverty. That the island has already languished under American rule--our revolutionary forefathers did not expect that their descendants would so soon go into the “ruling” business--the most disinterested witnesses attest. A leading journal of this city, The Herald, prints in heavy-faced type the following statement of a correspondent: “American military officials told me at the outset that the year and a half of American sovereignty had been a blight on the island. This was not the echo of Spanish or of Puerto Rican feelings. They spoke their own views with soldierly frankness and sometimes with a word of regret for their own position. Their talk was more pointed than when filtered through official channels.” It is in these circumstances that our Legislature, at the instance of a benevolent President, decides to refund to the people of the island two million dollars of duties collected in our ports on their products. Our tariff system breeds poverty in the population it oppresses, and then we rush to their assistance with a largess. They ask for justice and we offer them alms--alms for which the correspondent already quoted says he can not find a single individual who is grateful. We rob the Puerto Rican Peter to pay our own tobacco-growing Paul; and then we rob the whole community in order to pay back Peter. And, strange to say, some of us feel very virtuous over the business. The countenance of the President glows with satisfaction over the thought of all the good he is doing. For our part, we view the matter in a different light. The money will, of course, meet certain expenses of government in Puerto Rico; but there is reason to fear that it will do as much to pauperize the island in one direction as the restriction of its trade will do in another. What the Puerto Ricans want is not alms, but commercial liberty. The repayment of this money will not stimulate their trade; it will not stimulate anything except their helplessness. It is an open question whether they will suffer more by our protectionist greed or by our wishy-washy sentimentality. Meantime what are we to think of the party system whose exigencies place us in so ridiculous a position before the world? How long shall it abuse our patience? Fragments of Science.