City defences.
--The Mayor of the town of Danville sent down 24 free negroes, to work on city defences. Six also came voluntarily from Lunenburg, and a large number of factory hands were sent down from this city, whose performances, it is said, were very inefficient, they having been unused to such work and accustomed to living within doors. The convicts from the Penitentiary (100 of whom are employed) work like beavers, and the negroes from Danville and Lunenburg worked very faithfully. The latter have now gone home. Mr. Richard Reins has general charge of the whole works, and John Hagan is Commissary for the whole of the force employed.The late action of the State Convention, together with the resolution passed by the Council on Monday, has made the services of the free negroes of the city available to do such work; and if those who are now encumbering the city with their worse than useless presence were immediately set to work, the whole of the defences could soon be completed, and at the same time our operations be relieved of the anomalous condition they have lately presented, of labor performed by volunteer free negroes, who came more than a hundred miles to work on the defences of the city, while hundreds of the same class are now in our midst, idle and vicious, and corrupting our slaves.
