guage of the North, the Southerners have turned round upon them, and have wrought themselves into the monstrous belief, now prevalent throughout the South, that slavery is actually a blessing, an institution commendable to humanity, and one to be cherished for its own deserts.

Originally the action of the Abolitionists, confined as it was to a small number, excited angry feeling, but very little political notice. The attempted insurrection, of which John Brown was the hero, greatly altered this. Miserable as was its failure, and wretched the whole enterprise, as an act of any reasoning creatures, still it was accepted by numbers, in the New England States, as an act of heroism. The language generally used in allusion to it, and that not by Abolitionists alone, excited a deep and abiding feeling in the South, a conviction that between the whole Northern population and themselves there yawned an impassable gulf, beyond the power of man to close, and certain to grow wider year by year. About the same period Helper's book appeared, and might have passed unobserved, but for the extraordinary course adopted to bring it into notice. It was recommended for circulation by the signatures of no fewer than sixty-eight members of the House of Representatives, including Mr. Seward. Much of it is a mere mass of rabid froth; here and there a striking passage may be found, but intermixed with others of the wildest and silliest character. How men of experience in

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, - - of property which-the whole of which the Constitution of the United States recognizes. Let us see how the Abolitionists

propose to deal with it. This man, Helper, writes: "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

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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 trading with a sham 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 evidence? 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 person should turn a flood of noxious gas into a chamber, and those within should reel and stagger under its poisonous effect, upon whom should our wrath be bestowed-and who might claim our 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 accomplished? 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? Is the language of American Abolitionists such that we should desire to enrich our literature with imita