political affairs, with the remotest idea of the difficulties of immediate emancipation,—the danger, the critical delicacy of the subject,-could have recommended such a production as this, is indeed hard to comprehend. It urges the North to exterminate slavery and at once, without the slightest compensation, in language of which the following is a specimen, addressed to the Southerners" Frown, sirs; fret, foam, prepare your weapons, threat, strike, shoot, stab, bring on civil war, dissolve the Union, nay, annihilate the solar system, if you will do all this, more, less, better, worse-anything; do what you will, sirs-you can neither foil nor intimidate us; our purpose is as fixed as the eternal pillars of heaven; we have determined to abolish slavery, and-so help us God-abolish it we will."

We have seen how enormous are the interests at stake; how gigantic the amount of property in jeopardy, the whole of which exists under the laws of the United States and the sanction of its Constitution. Let us see how the Abolitionists

propose to deal with it. This man, Helper, writes: 66 Compensation to slave-owners for negroes. Preposterous idea-the suggestion is criminal, the demand unjust, wicked, monstrous, damnable. Shall we pat the blood-hounds for the sake of doing them a favour? Shall we fee the curs of slavery to make them rich at our expense? Pay these whelps for the privilege of converting them into decent, honest, upright men ?"

In

other passages they are compared with "mad dogs" -with "small-pox, as nuisances to be abated;" they are classed with gangs of " licensed robbers,' "thieves," and "murderers," and addressed in terms and insulted with epithets such as none, however disinterested, can read without strong feelings of indignation.

This is the wretched ribaldry approved by Mr. Seward and Mr. Sherman, the two leading politicians of the North, they knowing it to be addressed to their fellow-citizens-a people of eight millions in number—the fellow-countrymen of Washington, Madison, and Jefferson; and simply because they continue to be what those, the Fathers of the Republic, were. Can we wonder that such language as this would incense mortal men; or that, when they found those who approved of and endorsed it exalted to power, they should indeed conclude that fellowship with such was no bond of love, but, as others have termed it, a " union of hate?" What could result from such language and principles as these, but woe to the slave, and destruction to the Union?

The ablest intellect the North has produced all will admit to be that of Daniel Webster. In 1851 he spoke thus: "It is said by a class of men to whom I have referred that the Constitution is born of hell; that it was the work of the devil; and that Washington was a miserable blood-hound set upon the track of the African slave. Men who utter such sentiments as these are ready at

any moment to destroy the charter of our liberties, of all your happiness, and of all your hope. They are either insane, or fatally bent on mischief. Insanity is a sad thing, but there is one form of it that is execrable—that is, sham insanity. One of the chief leaders of the Abolitionists, on the 4th July, 1856, undertook "to register a pledge before heaven to do what within him lay to effect the eternal overthrow of the blood-stained Union." This very man is now taking an active part in support of the war to maintain that "bloodstained" Union. Had Daniel Webster lived to this day, he would have seen that some of those he spoke of as insane, were only making a trade of their insanity.

It is very remarkable that some of this spirit of mere fanaticism has crossed over, and crept into the press of this country. We find it difficult to account for the sudden violence with which the subject has been discussed in some directions. At the worst, slavery is only the same thing now that it was last year in the Union. It is no peculiar iniquity of the Southern States. Brazil escapes these invectives. Spain is a slave-holding and slave-trading country. Turkey, our recent ally, is by no means free from it. France held slaves within the memory of all who are not children, and, as we know, has carried on a slave-trade in disguise within the last two years. Nay, are we, as a people, to forget that we too were slaveowners within a period not yet remote, and that

our own slavery was far more harsh than that of the Southern States, as the relative statistics clearly prove? Are we to forget that our own hands inflicted this injury upon the people? They indeed might justly vent their indignation upon us, and cast on us the reproach, that we planted this evil in the soil. But what right have we to pour out invectives upon those who are simply the victims of our own wrong! ? Is there an epithet in all the vocabulary discharged upon the South that does not reflect upon the memory of our own fathers? Is it a reasonable thing to visit others with denunciations because they do not terminate that which we cannot tell them how to end? The crime of slavery lies in the creation of it-that was our act. If some one should turn a flood of noxious gas into a chamber, and those within should reel and stagger under its poisonous effect, whom should we visit with our wrath, and to whom lend some little consideration?

Further, are we really sincere in desiring to improve the condition of the negro, and to obtain for him, if it be a possible thing, the inestimable boon of freedom? If so, how is it to be accom. plished? One thing is plain to all men, that the method of abuse employed has had but the natural effect of aggravating the evils of Slavery. With such experience before us, shall we pick up these old weapons to use them secondhand? ls the language of American Abolitionists such that we should desire to enrich our literature with imita

tions of it; or is their discretion so obvious that we do well to take their judgment as a guide? Is there no new path, as yet unexplored, that at least is not known to be hopeless?

There is such a course, which may be taken, too, with some rational prospect of success; for the secession of the South, followed, as it inevitably must be, by its independence, affords the first gleam of hope that has dawned in America upon the negro race. We have seen that the restoration of the Union would shut out all possibility of benefit to the slave. We have seen that the Constitution as it stands permits no hope; that both the President and the Congress have expressed their perfect willingness to add fresh props in support of slavery; that it is intended to render it irrevocable so far as Federal legislation can make it so. But it must also be remembered that a restoration of the Union, were it to occur as the issue of the present war, would involve an arrangement of conditions of peace. However speedily that might happen, the cost and danger of the war to the North would have been sufficient. The policy of the Government would be to avert a fresh outbreak by every conceivable privilege. The supreme object would be to buy or bribe back the affections of the estranged partner, and efface the bitter memories of the past. Within limits, to be imposed only by a sense of shame, it is difficult to imagine any concessions too great to be granted. In all this there