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affairs-that their habits are better adapted to the hardships and dangers of war, to authority in command or alacrity in obedience that their choice of positions more than supplies the place of numbers-that the financial effects of the war will be to them of comparatively easy endurance-that they have in their favour space and time-and that ample motives exist for that perseverance which is all that is requisite to insure success.

Hence we conclude that the attempt to subdue such a country and such a people is a lamentable delusion-attempted, not as the decision of calm judgment, but the rash result of that unreasoning excitement to which the people of the North are now subject. If this be so, it follows that a continuance of the war can have no other result than to leave the people of the South in possession of the political liberty they now possess, and to burthen the North with a crushing load of debt, that will have purchased nothing but taxation to themselves, and bitter memories to descend as a baneful legacy to future generations.

CHAPTER VIII.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.

WE have observed that this country is not a disinterested spectator of the present conflict, but, on the contrary, is even now suffering from its consequences, whilst soon the largest branch of our industry will be paralyzed, not from incidents inevitable in war, to be endured with resignation and long-suffering patience, but from a deliberate, and, in our judgment, unnecessary act of one of the belligerents. As our population more or less depending on the cotton trade is estimated at four millions, the amount of destitution and woe that may be inflicted by the sudden deprivation of that material, is such that the mind shrinks from the attempt to gauge it. For how many years is this to continue? We see nothing to prevent the present war from lasting, as civil wars have always endured, for a long series of years, unless, indeed, a financial collapse of the Northern power should bring it to a sudden termination. A year will very soon have elapsed since the formation of the Southern Government. In that time the people of the North, so far from having made any progress in the contest, are clearly further from the

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subjugation of the South than at the commencement of the campaign. They have expended an enormous sum, sustained a deplorable defeat, and exposed the hollowness of their military system; they are now dividing into parties rancorously opposed, and their forces remain within sight of the original starting-point.

It has been strongly urged that we have no right to think of the position of our own working class, or to give any heed to what may appear our own interest in the eventual result, and this on the ground that great principles are at issue which command our deference. One of these is that love for law and order, which, it is argued, should enlist our sympathies with a Government struggling to crush rebellion. This argument is weakened in its force when it comes from men who, so far in their history, have never themselves permitted an opportunity of sympathizing with rebellion to escape. As each of the colonies of Spain revolted none were so eager to encourage the rebels; and when the attempt at insurrection occurred in Canada none were more prominent actors than American citizens, under the name of "sympathizers."

This, however, would not affect whatever merits there may be in the plea. Assuredly there is no disposition in this country to lean in favour of turmoil; but we cannot realize an act as that of rebellion or treason or piracy, simply because these names are applied to it. We are told that in the

United States the people are the sovereign. Here is an act committed by many millions of this sovereign people; against whom do they rebel? Can a sovereign, or a large portion of a sovereignty, be a rebel? In the usual meaning of our language rebellion is an act of the subject. Are, then, many millions of the sovereign people of the United States subjects, and to whom? Who is the monarch so supreme that in comparison even the sovereignty of the people may be termed a rebel? Is it the law? But where is the law? Assertions are not laws, nor yet ambitious theories, nor yet conceptions of advantage. Laws are enactments solemn, comprehensible, on known and legible record. Where, then, is the law which the States of the South have broken? And if in America the Government be merely an agent, then, as there exists no law that forbids the secession of a State, against whom or what do they rebel?

It is true we are a loyal people, but ours is not the loyalty of those who hug the trappings of divine right; ours is a loyalty based on reason, on experience, on full knowledge that in union with the advantages of order we enjoy the blessings of liberty. And our love of liberty is so strong, that we cannot spurn the desire for it in others. our ignorance of the merits of this question ever so great, we behold a country of vast extent and large numbers earnestly desiring self-government. threatens none, demands nothing, attacks no one, but wishes to rule itself, and desires to be “let

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alone." Another portion of the same country, stronger and richer, asserts that it shall not rule itself, and proceeds to invade it with fire and sword in the name of free institutions.

Institutions may be wise or beneficent, but when imposed on a great people by force of arms will they be free institutions? We feed a slave well, we clothe him, we attend to his health, we surround him with protection-he eats and sleeps, grows strong, and is full of empty laughter-yet he is a slave. There are no chains that clank upon his limbs-we have imposed fetters on his will. Slavery, then, is not material but mentalnot bondage of the man, but imprisonment of the man's mind. When the mind, the will, of a great people is restrained and directed by force of others,.in what does it differ from this? What is liberty? Is it permission to grow cotton, or the privilege to live and trade? These things may be done in Abyssinia. There must be a something above, beyond these things-the freedom of a people's will. If this be denied, where will liberty be-in what will it consist? That noblest of man's possessions was never yet allotted to him, as the gift of great armies coming upon his soil. Never yet have the strong invaded the weaker— to impose liberty upon them. They who invite us to sympathize with overwhelming force, or to approve the armed invasion of a free people, may invoke law, or compact, or grandeur, or tradethey cannot beguile us with the name of liberty.

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