dents. At the beginning of the century Louisiana was purchased from France, and Florida was taken from Spain; so that the area of slavery was enormously increased, and the position of the South seemed to be impregnable. It was not then dreamed that slavery would come to be regarded as a curse-a thing to be denounced as a crime in pulpits and on platforms. It was not foreseen that the source of supply would be dried up, and the importation of slaves from Africa-which was then as much a matter of course as the importation of manufactures from England-would become an act to which the feelings of mankind would be as much opposed as to piracy or murder.

But a change took place. In 1808 the Slave-trade was forbidden. The Northern States were gradually ceasing to hold slaves, who, owing to the difference of soil and climate, were far less valuable there than in the South; and these slaves were in the great majority of cases not emancipated but sold to the Southern planters, who, having paid for them as property, naturally expected that as purchasers their title would be respected by the sellers. But new interests were springing up in the North, where the active industry of the people was creating manufactures to compete with the broadc-loths of Yorkshire and the calicoes of Lancashire. We shall advert to this subject more fully by and by. Here we need only mention that these manufactures were encouraged by highly protective duties, the burden of which fell almost exclusively on the inhabitants of the South, who were entirely agriculturists, who had no manufacture of their own, and who were the chief customers of the North. Their object was to get manufactures cheap in exchange for their cotton and sugar, and coffee and tobacco. They therefore would gladly have seen the ports of the Union admit all that Europe would send them free of duty. The object of the Northern States was to make foreign manufactures dear, and thereby force the South to buy from them. Thus the commercial interests of the two great geographical divisions of the country became antagonistic; and this led to a struggle for political supremacy. Now here the element of slavery was of vital importance-not as a social but a political question. The original number of the States was, as we have said, thirteen: before the outbreak of the civil war they were thirtyfour. The increase was made from time to time as the tide of population rolled on, and countries, which a few years before had for the first time echoed to the axe of the backwoodsman, assumed the dignity of organized States, and claimed admission into the Union. But each new State sent its two members to the Senate, and the balance of political power there would of course incline to the South or to the North, according as the majority of those States

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States were slave-holding or free-soil. It was the same in the House of Representatives, but not in the same degree. There, owing to the large proportion of members who were returned by the older and more thickly peopled States, the representatives of the new comers did not at first so materially alter the relative positions of the two parties. For a long time the South had the majority, but that majority began steadily to decrease. The rate of immigration into the Free States became more and more rapid, and as they became more populous of course they returned more members. If the Slave States remained stationary, or did not advance in the same ratio, it was clear that they must be beaten in the struggle: and this the more certainly as the minimum number taken as the standard of representation was increased. For it is easily seen that if that number is large, it may be impossible for particular States, even although increasing in numbers, to add a single unit to their members, while others may be able to add several. Now what are the facts? We will quote from Mr. Spence :

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'Originally Virginia returned 10 members to 6 from the proportions are now--Virginia 11 to New York 30. not all. Virginia had at one time 23 members, now reduced to 11, although her population has increased, slowly indeed, but steadily, during the period. And South Carolina, which in the scheme of the Constitution stands for 5 in 65, or one-thirteenth of the representation, will return, under the last census, 4 out of 233, or one-sixtieth part. Hence that State has now less than a quarter of the representative power it had when the Federal compact was framed-a compact entered into with the expectation of advantage from it.'

The consequence was that in 1820, when Missouri applied for admission into the Union, the relative numbers in the Senate were so equally balanced, that its admission as a slave-holding or a free-soil State would have turned the scale in favour of either the South or the North. It was this,' says Mr. Spence, which caused the desperate character of that struggle. The mere admission of a single State had been accepted with indifference before, when regarded merely as the admission of one to a number, but it had become the weight that was to turn the scale.' The contest ended in the well-known Missouri compromise, by which slavery was excluded from all the territory embraced in the acquisition of Louisiana north of a line coinciding with 36° 30′ latitude.

The next great struggle was as to the admission of Texas. It was torn from Mexico by the South, as Florida had been torn from Spain. Let it be signified to me,' General Jackson had written to President Monroe, through any channel, that the possession

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of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished.' This seemed to be an important gain to the South, but mark the retribution that followed! The annexation of Texas led to a war with Mexico, and this to the extension of the Union to the shores of the Pacific: gold, apparently inexhaustible, was discovered in California, and an enormous tide of population flowed into the new El Dorado, and also into Oregon, adding immensely to the territory of the Northern free-soil States. Again, the Irish famine occurred. It was now no longer the influx of emigrants, but the exodus of a nation to the North. The population there became overpoweringly greater than in the South, and the ratio of members in the House of Representatives followed in the same proportion. The South struggled hard for the maintenance of its supremacy. The North had been unwilling to extend the Missouri compromise to the West, for the effect of that would be to extend slavery to every new State south of that line as far as the Pacific, and the South would not rest under it because it prevented slavery from extending northwards. The result was that in 1844 Mr. Douglas, representing the interests of the Slave States, carried the Nebraska Bill, whereby the principle of 'squatter sovereignty' was established; that is, each territory before its admission into the Union was to determine whether it recognized slavery or not; and, in the words of the Act, when admitted as a State or States the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their institutions may prescribe at the time of their admission.'

But the decision in the Dred Scott case made this a dead letter. For the Supreme Court there decided that it was contrary to the Constitution to declare slavery illegal, and therefore beyond the competence of the legislative authority in any territory to prohibit it. The question again assumed a practical form in the case of Kansas. We all know that this was made the battle-ground of the contending parties, and this not figuratively but literally; for civil war raged in the territory and blood flowed, because the minority in favour of slavery would not yield to the majority who wished to exclude it. We give no opinion as to which party was right in a constitutional point of view, nor stop to inquire with what show of justice or reason the Slave States, which had carried the Nebraska Act, now practically repudiated it. Our object is to show the nature of the struggle, and the causes which led to the Secession.

No stronger proof can be given of the political character of the struggle between the South and the North, than that which

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at first sight appears to be entirely a social or commercial question-namely, the extension of slavery into new territories or States. For it would seem to be directly contrary to the interest of the cotton-planter and sugar-grower to bring fresh districts into competition with himself. He has now a monopoly of production. Why should he wish others to share in it, and thus lower his profits? Can it be possible that the agriculturist of Virginia or Georgia should desire New Mexico and Arizona to become slave-holding States, in order that they may produce cotton and sugar in rivalry with himself? Or is it the want of fresh soil that is felt, owing to the exhaustion of the old plantations, and is he obliged to look out for new fields of labour in which his slaves may be more profitably employed? Nothing of the kind. The planter of Virginia has no thought of transferring himself or his slaves to New Mexico, some thousand miles away. And how stand the facts as to the increase of slavery in the new districts? New Mexico has an area of 200,000 square miles, and at the end of ten years there are upon the territory twenty-two slaves, and of these only twelve are domiciled. And yet the area of New Mexico is four times as large as England. When, therefore, so little pains are taken to propagate slavery outside the circle of the existing Slave States, it cannot be that the extension of slavery is desired by the South on social or commercial grounds directly, and still less from any love for the thing itself for its own sake. But the value of New Mexico and Arizona politically is very great. the Senate they would count as four votes, and their representatives in Congress would vote with the South or with the North according as they ranked in the category of slave-holding or free-soil States.

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Surely then these facts prove that it was not because slavery was in jeopardy that the South seceded from the North. Nor can the North pretend that she is fighting in the cause of humanity to remove the blot of slavery from the escutcheon of the Union. She was never more disposed to rivet the chains of bondage and render emancipation hopeless in those territories where alone slavery can exist for purposes of production, than at the very moment when she would have us believe that her zeal for the interests of the slaves was the cause of the alienation of the South.

But if this be so, the question naturally occurs, What was the cause of offence? How came the views of the South to be so opposed to those of the North that it determined at all hazards, and at any cost, to renounce partnership, and declare itself independent? Why was combined political action necessary the case of all the Southern States to oppose the policy of the

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North?

North? If slavery was not in danger, what else had they to fear? In the first place, the North and the South did not really constitute one nation. In the next place, their commercial interests were in conflict. The North wished to foster its own manufactures by high protective tariffs, the burden of which fell chiefly on the South; and that in two ways. First, because they were the largest consumers; and, secondly, because as producers they were unable to exchange their commodities with the manufactures of England to the same extent or advantage as if the duties on imports had been lower. When the Constitution was first framed the whole of the States were agricultural, and all manufactures were imported. The early tariffs were extremely moderate; the duties on manufactured goods varying from 5 to 7 per cent. The war with Great Britain in 1812-13 led to the introduction of home manufactures, but only in the North. With the return peace came distress upon the newly-created interests, which had to struggle against competition with England. In 1816 a tariff of high protective duties was imposed, under which the manufactures of the North flourished at the expense of their Southern neighbours. Capital was attracted, and that branch of industry became more and more powerful in itself and influential in Congress. In 1823 a farther large increase of duties was proposed. The Southern States strenuously opposed the measure; but they were beaten by narrow majorities of 107 to 102 in the House of Representatives, and 25 to 21 in the Senate. In 1828 the struggle was renewed; and on that occasion, in the course of the debate, the following prophetic words were spoken by one of the members in the House of Representatives:

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'If the union of these States shall ever be severed, and their liberties subverted, the historian who records these disasters will have to ascribe them to measures of this description. I do sincerely believe that neither this Government, nor any free government, can exist for a quarter of a century under such a system of legislation.'

The tariff came again under revision in 1832. Owing to excessive protective duties, there was now so large a surplus of revenue that it became necessary to reduce them. But the Northern States were determined that their manufactures should be favoured at the expense of other commodities. The South protested against this injustice, but in vain. The new tariff passed, and was so flagrantly unfair that a convention was summoned in South Carolina, which passed an ordinance declaring it null and void, on the ground that Congress had exceeded its just powers under the Constitution. The danger was so imminent that the North now yielded to fear what it had refused to grant to justice. News arrived that South Carolina was calling

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