out her militia, and preparing for war. Upon this a measure was hastily introduced and rapidly passed, by which a large though gradual reduction of duties on manufactures was effected. South Carolina was appeased, and the peril for the moment passed away.

In 1842, owing to the impoverished state of the exchequer, which arose chiefly from a reduction in the income derivable from the sale of public lands, the duties were again raised. This is known as the Morrill Tariff; and, to quote the words of Mr. Spence, from that day to this the fiscal system of the United States has been continuously protective, to the profit of Northern manufactures at the cost of the Southern agriculturist.' For the Southern States are the great exporters of the Union. Our imports from them have reached thirty millions a-year. They wish to receive our earthenware, woollens, and calico in exchange; but the North does all in its power to exclude them by a high and most complicated tariff, in order to protect its own manufactures. We need not here discuss the question of free trade and protection. It is beside our purpose at present to say anything as to the policy or impolicy of such a system in a commercial point of view; but it is all-important to remember that the whole of the South was, without exception, opposed to these duties, and their interest was diametrically against such legislation. It enhanced the price of that which they had to buy, and diminished the exchangeable value of that which they had to sell. We will quote a passage from Coleridge's 'Table Talk,' p. 230, to show the view taken of the conduct of the Northern States, as far back as 1833, by one of the deepest thinkers of this century—a man who felt no interest in party questions, except in so far as they involved some principle of importance. After showing that taxation may, without being unfair, press unequally, or apparently so, on different classes in a State, he goes on to say: 'But when New England, which may be considered a State in itself, taxes the admission of foreign manufactures in order to cherish manufactures of its own, and thereby forces the Carolinians, another State of itself, with which there is little intercommunion, which has no such desire or interest to serve, to buy worse articles at a higher price, it is altogether a different question, and is, in fact, downright tyranny of the worst, because of the most sordid, kind.'

Can we then wonder that the Southern States were embittered against the North, and that they looked upon the commercial tariffs of which they were the victims as a kind of robbery? To make head against such a system they required a majority in Congress, and, by allying themselves to the Democrats in opposi

tion to the Republicans, they were barely able to maintain an unequal struggle. We now see the immense importance of slavery in a political point of view. It was not from any admiration of the thing in itself, nor from a desire to create competition with themselves, but in order to gain votes in the Senate and the House of Representatives that they battled so desperately for the admission into the Union of new territories as slave-holding and not as free-soil States. But it would be idle to deny that the tone adopted by the North on the subject of slavery exasperated the South, even when there was the least ground for fear that legislative protection to their property would be withdrawn. Books, sermons, speeches-a whole flood of literature was directed against slavery, and the cotton-planters were held up to public execration as beings who were a disgrace to humanity. The Abolitionists preached a crusade against the Southerner in language which made the blood boil in his veins. God forbid that we should say a word in favour of slavery: it is a horrible evil, and England has no deeper cause for self-gratulation than the pecuniary sacrifices she made to shake off the pollution from her for ever. But it is impossible to deny that it would be an atrocious wrong to deprive forcibly the planter of his property without compensation. What then must have been his feelings to hear himself threatened with spoliation, and his name associated with infamy? If the efforts of the Abolitionists have had no other effect, they have done this: they have produced an intensity of hatred in the South which, added to the sense of injury from hostile tariffs, made its continuance in the Union, except under compulsion, impossible. Men will not remain in partnership who detest each other, and who have each sufficient capital to set up business for themselves. If the subject had been approached in a more conciliatory manner, the result might have been different. All that the planter heard of from the Abolitionist was a denial of his right, and the only plan for making him relinquish his property was confiscation.

It is remarkable that no feasible scheme for extinguishing slavery has yet been proposed by the North. The obvious mode is compensation. We are not now considering the question of what would become of the Blacks themselves, and what would be their destiny if suddenly emancipated. We confine ourselves solely to the question of property. We never yet heard of a deliberate plan for buying up all the negroes. Perhaps the Abolitionists were appalled at the magnitude of the sum, for, taking the number of negro slaves according to the last census at four millions, and averaging their value at six hundred dollars a head, which is not a high figure, the amount of compensation

required

required would be five hundred millions of pounds sterling! Here, by the way, we must observe, that the expenditure of the first year of the war is computed at two hundred millions, and that payments in specie have already been suspended. But surely, if the North is as sincere in its hatred of slavery as we are asked to believe, we might expect something to be done for its extinction in cases where the process would be easy and the pecuniary cost small. The little state of Delaware has less than 1800 slaves. The district of Columbia which surrounds Washington, and which, as the seat of the Government of the United States, is placed by the Constitution under the exclusive control of Congress, without the possibility of any question of State rights being raised, contains 3181 slaves. Why are not these districts purged from the black stain of slavery? The conduct of the white inhabitants of the North to the poor negro, or any one tainted with his blood, is thoroughly unchristian. They consider contact contamination. It was only the other day that we saw a petition from the coloured citizens of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love,' praying to be allowed to ride in the passenger cars. It is not then surprising that the South is tempted to regard the clamour of the North against slavery as something very like hypocrisy, and to resent with bitterness a cry which it knows to be injurious and believes to be insincere.

But it may now be asked, Why was the election of Mr. Lincoln as President the turning-point of the struggle? what was there in that event so intolerable to the South that it rushed at once into secession? We have seen that he was prepared to give slavery more protection than it had ever before enjoyed; and at first sight it would seem a most unjustifiable act for half a continent to plunge into civil war because its own candidate was beaten in an election struggle-to draw the sword because it was defeated by the ballot-box. It was not the first time that the Southern States had been obliged to accept a President from the North, and had lost the man of their own choice. But they did not in angry disappointment break up the Union. We cannot answer the question better than in the words of Mr. Spence:

'Because for the first time in the history of the United States the election of the President was purely geographical; it was not a defeat at the hands of a party, but at those of the Northern power. It was an act which severed North from South as with the clean cut of a knife. Upon such a division Jefferson remarked long ago; a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated, and every irritation will make it deeper and deeper. The Northern States had 183 votes, the Southern,

if unanimous, 120. Hence it was plain that if the North chose to act in a mass, its power was irresistible. At last it did act in a mass. Upon that event political power departed from the South and departed for ever. Looking at the election of Mr. Lincoln from an European point of view, it was an ordinary, an insignificant event; looking at it as seen by the Southerner, it was the knell of the departing independence and welfare of this portion of the Continent.'

But besides slavery and commercial tariffs, and altogether independent of any conflict of interests, sooner or later Secession was inevitable. The Federal Republic contained within itself the germ of its own destruction. It was not a homogeneous whole, but was made up of incongruous parts, the cohesion of which was sure to be in the inverse ratio of their size. A mass so composed will break by its own weight. The population of the Union at the date of the Constitution was not so great as the population of Scotland at the present day. Now the population is more than thirty-one millions; the number of States is thirtyfour; and the territory embraced is so enormous that it is difficult for the imagination to realise it. The valley of the Mississippi alone can contain and support a population equal to that of Europe. The Union stretched from Canada to Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It comprised States, some of which were larger than most European kingdoms. And the idea of their separate independence was carefully fostered by their institutions: each had its mimic Congress, its Governor, its own taxation, its own militia, its own laws. As they grew in numbers and importance, they would necessarily become more and more impatient of external control, and unwilling to submit to legislation by others which they might think adverse to their interests. The centrifugal force was becoming year by year stronger than the centripetal; and we know that in dynamics the result is, that the revolving body flies off at a tangent. The event was long foreseen. Even Washington had foreboding fears that the extent of the thirteen original States—a mere seaboard of the Atlantic -was too great for permanent union. He hardly dared to look into the future. Let experience,' he said, 'solve the question; to look to speculation in such a case were criminal.' Jefferson wrote thus: 'I have been amongst the most sanguine in believing that the Union would be of long duration. I now doubt it much, and see the event at no great distance.' Curtis in his "History of the Constitution,' observes, many of the wisest of the statesmen of that period, as we now know, entertained doubts whether the country embraced by the thirteen original States would not be too large for the successful operation of a Repub lican government.' In 1833 Coleridge said (see Table Talk,'

p. 201)

p. 201) Can there be any thorough national fusion of the Northern and Southern States? I think not. In fact, the Union will be shaken almost to dislocation whenever a very serious question between the States arises. The American Union has no centre, and it is impossible now to make one. The more they extend their borders into the Indians' land, the weaker will the national cohesion be. But I look upon the States as splendid masses to be used, by and by, in the composition of two or three great governments.' A Russian writer, Ivan Golovin, remarked six years ago, A visit to the United States has the strange property of cooling democrats. Again I tell you that the manifest destiny of the States is disunion. I do not give the Union eight years to last.' Grattan says, 'the day must no doubt come when clashing objects will break the ties of a common interest which now preserve the Union. The districts of South, North, and West are joined, like some wall of incongruous material, with cement insufficient to secure perpetual cohesion.' Sterling in his Letters from the Slave States in 1857,' declares that 'no wise man would venture to foretel the probable issue of American affairs during the next four years.'

But the next question is, Had the Southern States the constitutional right to secede? Was Secession an act of Rebellion? The Unionists declare that it was. They say that every Southerner found in arms against the Federal forces is a traitor, and may be lawfully hanged as such. The Confederate States assert that they are guilty of neither treason, nor rebellion, nor revolt; and that they had as much right to withdraw from the Union, if they pleased, as other States have to elect to remain in it. Whatever may be the merits of the case, this at least is certain: if the Confederate States are successful in establishing their independence, Foreign Powers will, nay must, as a matter of course, recognise that independence. They will be admitted into the family of nations, whatever may have been their title during the struggle. Still the question is interesting in a constitutional point of view; and we believe it is one in which neither party will ever be likely to convince the other by argument; for it is full of difficulty, and might exhaust a volume instead of the few lines we can afford to bestow on it. The authorities have been examined by Professor Bernard with much acuteness and entire impartiality, and the whole question is argued by Mr. Spence with singular clearness and ability in the chapter of his work, headed Is Secession a Constitutional Right?' to which we refer our readers for a fuller discussion of the subject. We find on the threshold of the inquiry two principles in conflict -the Federative and National character of the Union. The Constitution