And at this point another fact stares us in the face that goes to strengthen the positions that have been taken, and to prove still more convincingly that this war is a righteous one upon the side of the Government, and a guilty one upon that of its enemies. There is no necessity of redressing grievances, either real or imaginary, under a democratic government, by the awful method of war. The right of armed revolution does not hold good in a democracy. When a people are governing themselves by universal suffrage; when no portion of them is made inferior by the law and constitution of the land to any other portion; when neither birth, nor wealth, nor even education and religion,

quote from one of those speeches when I declare that 'I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.' Those who nominated and elected me, did so with a full knowledge that I had made this and many other similar declarations, and had never recanted them."

And the last Congress passed the following resolution of Mr. Crittenden, affirming

"That this war is not waged in any spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing, or interfering with the rights or established institutions of any State, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several States unimpaired, and that as soon as these objects are accomplished, the war ought to cease."

give any superior political power or privilege to a class or a section, it is the sheerest self-will and the blackest of crimes, for a portion of the people to plunge the whole land into the horrors of war, for the removal of either real or imaginary grievances. If the political constitution of a country gives certain political rights to some of the citizens or some of the sections, and denies them to the remainder ; if the citizens or the sections are not equal in the eye of the organic law of the realm; then the right of armed revolution is a valid one. For then there is no mode of redressing grievances, in the last resort, but by war. It cannot be done by universal and equal suffrage, and therefore it must be done by gunpowder and cannon. The axiom that armed revolution is justifiable has grown up in the Old World, which is a world of unequal rights, a world of aristocracies, of monarchies, and of despotisms, and it is undoubtedly true there; but when it travels across the Atlantic, and comes into a new world of democratic ideas, and purely representative sovereignties, and universal suffrage, it ceases to be true: it is no longer an axiom.

For even if a majority should prove tyrannical, and trample on the vested rights of a minority, their triumph can be only temporary. It is not

supposable that from year to year, and from one generation to another, the preponderance will continue to be upon the side of injustice and wrong, in a country where universal suffrage prevails. Even when no critical questions are to be decided, even in the ordinary politics of popular government, the triumph is continually oscillating from one side to the other. No majority maintains itself as such from generation to generation. One administration goes and another comes, but the republic abides continually. Much less will a majority continue to hold power from year to year, when its victory is founded on a breach of constitutional rights, and results in tyranny and injustice toward the minority of the nation. It is, therefore, always the duty of the lesser portion to wait calmly for the sober second thought of the nation, of which it is an integral part. The resort to the horrors of war can never be justified under a republican government, where the will of the people, and not the power of a king, and peerage, and privileged classes, is the sovereign arbiter. The Southern States of the American Union needed only to bide their time, to enjoy their entire constitutional and vested rights. We say this the more readily, because, though we cannot concede the reality of all their alleged grievances,

we nevertheless sympathized deeply, and still sympathize, with that portion of the people who believe that the American Constitution is a compromise between opposing views, and that the true politics for the whole nation lies in that general line of direction. But the reckless and guilty rush to arms for the redress of grievances; the repudiation of the national symbol; the erection of another government in the very heart of the land, and the gathering of armies to uphold it; all this immediately made it the first and only duty of every patriot to put down domestic treason, and again lift up the national flag where it had been struck down.

But if the unrighteousness of this armed rebellion of the Southern States is clearly evident from the position of democracy, it is still more so from that of Christianity. It cannot be justified, in the least, on the principles of the gospel. Were the rights of conscience involved, and were there no peaceable mode of securing them through the ballot box; were it an instance in which a Philip II. were attempting to force the doctrines of the Papacy upon a Protestant province and dependency : then armed resistance would not only be allowable, but it would be blessed and crowned with glory and

immortality, by the Lord and Head of the Church himself. In such a case, he says to his servants : "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one." But the rights of conscience are not touched in the least, in this conflict. The questions that are involved are purely political, certainly so far as the aims of the leaders of the rebellion are concerned. It will not be pretended that they have plunged the whole country into war, for the purpose of improving the moral and religious condition of the Southern people, and of the four millions of slaves who are in bondage to them. It is true that the wrath of man will praise God in this as in every instance, and this war will undoubtedly result in moral and religious benefit to the Northern and Southern citizen, and to the Southern slave, but so far as the purposes of the Confederate politicians are concerned, it is a purely political war, and stands in no connection with either ethics or Christianity. It is not even a struggle for personal liberty, which, in the eye of Christianity, is a matter of secondary importance, provided the soul can enjoy the liberty wherewith "Christ maketh free."

Even if the South had been despoiled of certain democratic rights and privileges, St. Paul might say to them as he said to the Christian bondman as