The Senate has at length done its duty in providing for the equal payment of the colored troops, and for the fulfillment of the promises made by authority to those already enlisted. The House ought not to delay for a day to agree to the bill. For nothing is clearer than that the policy of employing colored troops should be renounced altogether, or that we should treat them honorably. Professor PECK, of Oberlin College, who has investigated the condition of these troops on the Atlantic coast, reports that the difference of pay between them and white soldiers is rapidly demoralizing them. Chaplain CONWAY writes to the same effect. At Fort Esperenza, in Texas, a colored battalion of the Fourteenth Rhode Island Artillery refused to receive their pay, and declared themselves out of the service; and the sad case of Sergeant WALKER in Florida, who was shot because he would not submit to be cheated by the authority of the United States, is fresh in our memories, and will always be shameful for our name. And while we refuse to treat these brave men honorably the rebels massacre them like dogs. The rebel conduct is fiendish, but at least it is consistent. If men, because they are of a certain color, may justly be deprived of liberty and all the other rights of human nature, they may certainly be deprived of life at the will of their captors. Massacre, barbarism, the most shocking inhumanity, are to be expected in a people who have been unfortunately bred under the slave system. But we have the right to require manliness and honor and justice of those who have been more fortunate. Shall we sacrifice the good name of our native land to the indulgence of a wretched prejudice?

"Well," says some reader, " I think they had better be paid—but what a pity that we had to call upon them to help us!" Why so? Why should the Government be dearer to any one class of citizens than to another? When it is threatened why should not the call for its defense be universal? You don't think it a pity to call in the aid, as soldiers, of foreigners of every race; why is it so that native Americans of every hue should be summoned? The remark is only an evidence of. the far-reaching taint of the slavery from which our troubles spring. For, except for the system which brands black men as pariahs, it would be as natural, and as much of course, that they should fight for the Government which protected their rights in common with all others, as that Gaseous and Normans should fight together for France, or Scotchmen, Welshmen, and Yorkshiremen for England.

Of all the inane remarks with which the earlier days of the war were rife none was more ludicrously silly than the exclamation, " Well, if white men can't put down this rebellion it had better succeed." It might as wisely have been said, " If the men with pug noses, or red whiskers, or who are five feet high, or the blue-eyed men, or the left-handed men, can't suppress it, it had better not be suppressed." The spirit which makes this kind of discrimination is one which entirely misapprehends the character of our Government. It is not a Government of any class of men whatever, but of all the people, of every descent, complexion, or race they may be. The cause of the United States is the cause of human nature, said JAMES MADISON, speaking for the Continental Congress. And in the introduction to the edition of the Federalist, just published by LIPPINCOTT, Mr. JOHN C. HAMILTON records with emphasis the well known sentiments of his father: "All men have one common original: they participate in one common nature, and consequently have one common right." His son and editor adds, "He meant the whole human race, and looked to the emancipation of the blacks as part of the great sacrifice to be laid by the American people on the altar of freedom."If we had always believed and acted as the fathers of our Government believed we should have had no war. Long ago the purely arbitrary distinctions between citizens would have been destroyed. And when we fully believe our own principle, and bring the Government to conform, we shall have permanent and prosperous peace, and not before.