but failed to attract attention, and his money being exhasted, he discharged his hands. I inclose you an article from the Mobile Evening News of August 29, respecting the defenses of Mobile, and commend to your attention the views of the writer respecting the motives the enemy have for taking the post and city.

R. H. S.

[Inclosure.]

LOOK TO OUR HOMES.

The people of Mobile have nobly contributed to the war of independence in which the country is engaged. We have no data by which to arrive at an estimate of the amount disbursed by private liberelity in the equipment of troops for the field, but we have seen enough to be satisfied that if figured up it would present an aggregate which would do honor to the patriotic zeal of a commmunity always noted for its private beneficence and public spirit. In this connection we wish to note a fact and utter a word of necessary warning. We have been accustomed to look upon Virginia as the seat of war, and our love of country and its cause have concentrated all our thoughts, energies, and sympathies upon that field of campaign. True, Virginia was the principal and great battle-ground. Our Government was there, our Virginia brothers were invaded, and the purses of our people flew open, and our young men rushed to arms to go to their succor. All this was nobly done and from the noblest impulses, and we are not to be understood as begrudging one dollar or one stout heart that has gone to help drive the invader from the soil of the Old Dominion. We took up the pen to remain the citizens of Mobile of an important fact which has been lost sight of and overshadowed by the exciting and brilliant events transpiring in Virginia. The fact is that we, the people of Mobile, are at war with the Lincoln Government. The time is at hand when it is no longer safe or pardonable to ignore this fact. Our city authorities have given proof that they not been unmindful of the gravity of its import. That proof is that they have exhausted all the means within their power to provide arms and military stores to meet a hostile danger which in all human probability is in store for this city. Fully conscious that the limited means afforded by the city treasury were inadequate to the demands for defense, the authorities made an appeal to the people to submit to a trifling voluntary tax (the city government having no power to levy a compulsory one) for the purpose of placing the city in a posture of defense. The proposition was met with a storm of clamor, and the Government, unwilling to risk the moral effect abroad of a defeat before the people of a tax measure to raise $50,000 to defend millions of property and the lives of men, women, and children, withdrew the order submitting the question. The time may soon come when those who smothered this appeal to the patriotism of the citizens of Mobile will discover that they have been "penny wise and pound foolish" in mounting that favorite hobby of demagogues - resistance to taxation. But a danger is rising before us in whose presence the policy of temporizes and time-servers must be thrust aside with public contempt.

If our enemy does not continue to act with that fatuity which has so far marked his military course, if those who rule his military councils are in earnest in this war of depredation and subjugation, they cannot help seeing that Mobile presents the most alluring and the most salient point of attack during the coming autumn. The possession of the forts that command our harbor, the bay, and the city of Mobile would give