their later secession must have already greatly impaired, the reopening of the African Slave-trade, are among its

necessary results?

Beside such gigantic evils, the mere question of intellectual development shrinks into paltriness. Yet we may not forget that the struggle of the North with the South is that of civilization with barbarism, of light with darkness. The invaluable works of Mr. Olmsted show clearly that slavery is absolutely destructive of any system of general education; that the thinning of the white population which it produces forbids all instruction to the poorer whites; that the ignorance of the children even of well-to-do landowners places them below the level of the artizan's son of the North. As to literature, beyond a system of journalism which must be onesided under pain of extinction, the South has and can have none. If it gives birth to a man of genius anywhere, he must necessarily take up his abode at the North, for the South has neither eyes to read, nor ears to hear, what he writes or says. Where are the Lowells, Longfellows, Bryants; where the Harriet Stowes, Hawthornes, Coopers, Holmeses; where the Channings, Emersons, Theodore Parkers of the South? Where are its men of science,-beyond here and there a physiologist, bent upon an anatomical demonstration of the right of human oppression, or upon resolving the sufferings and degradation of slavery into forms of medical pathology, and ticketing them with Latin names? This gradual quenching of human enlightenment can only proceed at a more rapid rate, if the South come out of the conflict victorious. More and more it must become a mere oligarchy, in which not only power, but knowledge, and morality even, must become the mere privilege of the few. For the sake of the South itself, the speedy and complete triumph of the North is a thing to be earnestly prayed for.

But I have hitherto treated the socalled Southern Confederacy on its own ground, as a slave state indeed, but as one having a right to exist. Has it such

a right? I declare that in all history I know of no instance of such shameful national deceit, falsehood, and hypocrisy as that upon which it is founded. There have been ere this, God knows, foul and shameless usurpations of power without number; but such usurpations have been the crimes of single men. The Southern Confederacy, if it subsists, will offer the unheard-of spectacle of a people born to national existence with a lie on its lips, and the fruits of robbery in its hand.

For this so-called Southern Confederacy is nothing but a successful Southern conspiracy. Thanks to the selfish indolence of the North, the slave-power had succeeded in making itself dominant in the Union. For a whole generation nearly, with scarcely a break here and there, it had held the Federal authority in its hands. The time came when the eyes of the North were opened by the too unblushing encroachments of the South. The North woke up from its lethargy, and in the last struggle but one for the Presidency gave the South a warning which it was too astute to neglect. Had the election of Colonel Fremont been carried, we should perhaps have never heard of secession. But in his place there was seated in the President's chair a politician the most contemptible, assuredly, that ever filled the chair of Washington (I forget neither Mr. Polk nor Mr. Tyler in using these words). Mr. Buchanan's term of office seems to have had no other practical effect than that of enabling the South to organize the most gigantic treason that the world ever saw. The plans of the conspirators were ripe when the time came for him to sink out of office. They had for them all the experience of statemanship. Every office was filled with their creatures. Almost every military post of danger within their limits was held by men whom they could trust. The Southern arsenals were filled with the whole matériel of war. Much of the navy was safe, as we have seen, in' a Virginian dock-yard. And so, when 1860 had fulfilled the promise of 1856, when Fremont's republican minority

had swelled into a majority for Lincoln, they had nothing to do, but to throw off the mask, and send forth their proclamations of nationality—

"Stuffed out with big preamble, empty words,

And adjurations of the God in heaven."

I believe that much unfair criticism has been expended on President Lincoln for his conduct in this crisis. For myself, I have confidence in "Old Abe." I thank God that the ruling hand in the North is his, and not that of some eloquent politician like Mr. Seward, whose coaxing speeches to the South have received so blunt a reply from the Columbiads of Charleston. Mr. Lincoln's position has been one of unexampled difficulty. He found himself with the barren title and loose authority of President, in a capital contained within a slave state, and close upon the borders of a revolted one, without an army, almost without a navy, the head of an administration filled with traitors. Army, navy, administration, he has had all three to organize at once, in the face of the enemy; he, the log-splitter of the West, matched against the practised statesmen of the South. I see no reason to doubt that he has acted manfully and judiciously till now. His proclamations have seemed to me always marked by plainness and directness-in short, by every quality which the Times has denied them to possess. He has succeeded in putting the South in the wrong at every step. He has maintained the borderstates in their allegiance long enough to show that the primary justification alleged for secession,-want of protection to slaves,―is a falsehood, since the states whose slaves have most facilities,—I might say have alone facilities,-for escape, are precisely those which have stayed longest in the Union. South Carolina, surrounded by slave territory except on its sea-board, was the first to secede; not one of the seven gulf-states has to endure on its internal frontier the polluting touch of freedom. Virginia's secession is of yesterday; Maryland

riots, and breaks up railway lines, but does not secede; Delaware, a mere strip of sea-shore, open to all the risks to "slave property" of the coasting trade; New Jersey, the last Northern spur of slavery jutting out into freedom, are in arms for the Union; Kentucky, separated by a river alone from free Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, affects to stand neutral; Missouri, the Delaware of the West, surrounded almost on three sides by free territory, has not yet seceded; even in the states I have named, Western Virginia, Western Kentucky, cast in their lot with the North; from Missouri itself come volunteers. On the other hand, the seizure of United States property by the seceded states is an act of sheer robbery, such as alone ought to put the Southern Confederacy at the ban of civilized nations; followed, as it has been, by the attack on Fort Sumter, and the unpunished violence of a Baltimore mob against soldiers simply going to the defence of the national capital. Thus, there has not been one step in the development of the Southern movement which has not been a flagrant wrong, an outrage on municipal law and on the law of nations alike. Conspiracy, rob-, bery, treason, warfare unprovoked, such have been its constant features.

And now, forsooth, it has taken a new step. It is about to cover the sea with privateers. Do men realize what a Southern privateer in tropical seas is likely to be? Simply a pirate. Ask any merchant-seaman of the last generation, who has traded in the Atlantic or the Pacific, what was the condition of the waters of North and South America in the days of the wars of independence of the Spanish colonies. Ask him what quarter the privateers of those days showed to the defenceless. Yet there were then no oceanic steamers, no clippers, rivals of steam. Nor was there then a Californian Eldorado discovered, nor an Australian. For every single privateer of those days, there will be ten. For every rakish schooner, there will be clippers of thrice the size, and nearly double the speed. For every sugar

vessel there will be a gold-ship for prize. And yet the Times has almost chuckled at the fact of Southern letters of marque being hawked round London!

And now perhaps we may see a little why it is that the North is rushing with such terrible energy into that struggle which our wise men affect hardly to understand; why the word "slavery" is hardly mentioned. The slavery question, as I have said, is absorbed in a far larger one. The struggle is that of all order, all loyalty, all justice, all peace, to say nothing of all trade and all prosperity, against anarchy, against treason, against brigandage. It is one of those great judgment days in the history of God's earth, in which there is a separation of the mingled elements of human polity; in which like cleaves to like; in which freedom finds itself surrounded by a whole family circle of rights, and slavery only takes the helm amidst the crew of wrongs. The North know and feel that if the right of wilful secession, founded on no tangible wrong, be once admitted, their whole union falls asunder; the American nation exists no longer. A riotous individualism takes the place of social order; every county, every city, every township, every hamlet, may claim the right to secede ; every individual citizen may quote the example in justification of any exercise of his self-will. Society sinks dissolved,-the right of the strongest becomes the sole arbiter between man and man. Does England suppose that such an example is likely to be a beneficial one to our North American colonies, to Australia, to the Cape?

Surely it is of vital interest to the whole civilized world, but above all to England, that this should not be; that there should be, on the other side of the Atlantic, something else than a fluctuant mass of petty hostile communities. It is of vital interest to the whole civilized world, but above all to England, that the seas should be free,that the marvellous hoards of the goldfields of the nineteenth century should not be at the mercy of the first pirate calling himself a privateer. The per

manent interests of the civilized world lie therefore with the North in this struggle, not with the South. If the security of the seas alone were to be purchased by the entire suppression of the cotton supply of the Southern States, sooner or later it would be felt to be cheaply purchased.

But the Morrill tariff? some one may say. The Morrill tariff was an act of monstrous folly, which probably was only perpetrated through the minds of the American people being absorbed in the far greater subject of secession itself. I believe the North to be heartily ashamed of it already. I believe England alone has it in her power to procure its abolition, with or without the concurrence of any other state, though all are interested in doing so. The question is simply this, whether advantage shall not be taken of this unexampled opportunity to abolish privateering at once and for ever? The measure which America, still under Southern influence, through the mouth of Mr. Buchanan, repelled, after the Crimean war, as contrary to her interests, would now, through the righteous judgment of God upon her foolish selfishness, prove to her the greatest of boons. Let the abolition of the Morrill tariff by the United States accompany a declaration by them, to be accepted by England, and I trust by all the European powers, that privateering shall be treated as piracy, and the southern conspirators will be deprived of their only really dangerous weapon of offence; nor should the quasirecognition of them as a "belligerent power" by the Queen's Proclamation stand in the way of such a measure as respects ourselves. As between England and America, we should be only returning to a previously existing state of things, since there was an express provision to this effect contained in the treaty of 1782, but which unfortunately was not renewed, and why should not the slave trade be declared piracy on the same occasion?

Meanwhile, does not our heart thrill within us with mixed feelings of shame, and admiration, and pride, as we behold

the North girding itself for the battle? How have we scorned the Americans for their worship of the "almighty dollar!" Lo! the merchants of New York-New York, the one city of all the North most dependent on its southern interests, the fitter-out of slavers, the stronghold of the democratic party for years come forward to pledge their support to the Union with a patriotism and self-sacrifice which put our sneers to the blush. Contributions by private individuals of a million of dollars towards the expenses of the war; salaries guaranteed by merchants to their clerks whilst absent on the country's service; judges descending from the bench to shoulder the rifle as volunteers; such are a few only of the grand instances of self-devotion which alone should be sufficient to prove to the most sceptical the enormous issues which the North feels to lie in this conflict. For the first time in history, since the days of old Rome, when Hannibal was under her walls, capital, the most arrant coward under heaven, has shown itself courageous. "Bears" are nowhere; money chooses to be abundant; the prices of Northern, i.e. loyal, securities struggle not to fall.

As we look upon these things, surely we Englishmen ought to feel that these men of the North are indeed "bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh." In spite of the large increase in Old England's colonial family, New England, though now dwelling apart, is still her mother's truest counterpart. Search the annals of America, and you will see that, by a natural gravitation, almost all that is noblest and best has ever sought the North. New England and Pennsylvania are peoples from the first, carrying with them orderly. freedom, and self-respect, and energy indomitable. Virginia, the Carolinas, represent at the outset but the struggles and scrambles of broken-down gentlemen and reckless adventurers. Any gleams of moral beauty which attach to the history of the South soon become quenched in gloom. The toleration of Maryland ends in the disgraceful rowdyism of Baltimore. The bright promise of

Georgia's freedom leads only to the sad dissensions between Oglethorpe and the Wesleys, and the shameful sanctioning of slavery by Whitfield. Since the American revolution, even more than before, each worthier batch of European emigrants-with one single noteworthy exception, the Germans of Texas-has invariably settled in the free North and West. And as to the more recent accretions to the South, is there one that does not estrange it more and more from its kinship with ourselves? How much have we in common with the mongrel population of Louisiana, Florida, Texas, as compared even with California, which the indomitable energy of the North has transformed from one of the sinks of the earth into a settled country, in half the time which it has taken to introduce the merest elements of security and decency into Texas?

Yes, the strong ties of blood bind England above all, yet not only England, but with it all the nations of free Protestant Europe, all the various branches of the great Teutonic race, Germans and Dutch, Swedes and Norwegians, essentially to the North. But race alone cannot explain the wondrous unhoped for spectacle of Northern self-devotion. Nothing, as it seems to me, can explain it but that strange religious revival which, a few years ago, ran through the United States, but exhibited its special power at the North. It was mixed up,

no doubt, with much extravagance and much hypocrisy; it has seemed to end in no practical result; it has appeared to many, and often to myself, but as a passing cloud. But I doubt greatly whether in that religious revival there were not sown the seeds of the present national movement. The most dispassionate observers did not fail to notice, that for the first time it startled men hitherto absorbed in the pursuit of wealth, by sudden glimpses of a world beyond. It must have been to many a first revelation of the reality of God's presence. It must have broken up the soil of many a fallow heart. Surely it was the Divine preparation for this hour of terrible trial.

PART I.

Ir may have been remarked by many besides myself what a deal of writing there has been of late about the Scottish character-its merits and defects; its peculiarities, more especially, in contrast with the English. Neither the writers in the leading journal nor the Saturday Reviewers seem able to keep their hands off the topic. Besides the running fire of references to it in the midst of other things, there is every now and then, in these quarters, an express dissertation on Scotticism and the Scotch. Whether the Scotch have humour, and, if so, of what kind it is, and wherein it differs from English wit; whether there is a type of intellect that can be called distinctively Scottish, and, if so, how it has arisen and what has been the worth of its manifestations; whether, in our national literature, the Scotch have always been but hodmen and secondrates, interspersed in a succession of grander Englishmen, or whether, granting that the English stream, prior to its junction with the Scottish, was much the more full and broad, one might not yet fairly maintain that the mountainstream did deliver into its sister, at the time of their junction, some small characteristic accumulation of moment, and that, since that time, an unexpectedly large proportion of the blended waters

1 History of Civilization in England. By Henry Thomas Buckle. Volume the Second. London: Parker, Son and Bourn. 1861.

No. 21.-VOL. IV.

has consisted in the swollen flood from the hills; how much of the good and how much of the bad in the Scottish mind has been caused by the Scottish theology; whether almost every really eminent Scotchman for a century past has not been a recreant from the Kirk; whether there is or can be such a thing as free thought, except profoundly under the rose, within six miles of Dr. Candlish; and whether in all the earth there is such another city as Glasgow for the theological use of sulphur combined with the physiological use of alcohol-on these and other forms of the same question not a day passes without something new or old being said in print. The odd thing is that, with so many stirring matters to think of, people should be hammering away so busily at this somewhat abstract topic of the intellectual differences between the Scotch and the English. Partly it may be because there have been so many racy books of Scottish biography and Scottish history of late to furnish texts for the discussion; partly it may be because the Scotch themselves raised a controversy recently about the Scottish Lion and the rights of the Thistle, which has naturally provoked a reaction; but then, as these causes are themselves effects, the explanation of the phenomenon is still to seek. It cannot be for nothing that so much speculative effort has recently been expended in this direction. Something must be in the air on the subject which will one day precipi

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