laws adapted to its position, and permitting selfrespect, to seize this opportunity to cure the evils. which unchequered prosperity and stimulated growth have engendered, and at length to realize and manifest that there are other, and perhaps nobler objects of ambition, than enormous growth of cotton, or the possession of illimitable provinces.

The following passage occurs in Justice Story's admirable Commentaries: "The fate of other republics their rise, their progress, their decline, and their fall-are written but too legibly on the pages of history, if, indeed, they were not continually before us in the startling fragments of their ruins. They have perished, and perished by their own hands. Prosperity has enervated them, corruption has debased them, and a venal populace has consummated their destruction. They have listened to the fawning sycophant, and the base calumniator of the wise and the good. They have reverenced power more in its high abuses, and summary movements, than in its calm and constitutional energy, when it dispensed blessings with an unseen and liberal hand. Patronage and party, the triumph of a leader, and the discontents of a day, have outweighed all solid principles of government. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall when the wise are banished from the public councils because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded because they flatter the people in order to betray them."

How forcibly these eloquent words apply to the facts we have passed in review! How plain for whom the picture was intended! And those earnest men, in this country, who, from a remote distance, admire, or profess to admire, American institutions, do they believe themselves more competent to judge of them,-better versed in their details, more accurately informed of their results,-than such men as Justice Story, or Chancellor Kent, the most profound of American minds, whose powerful eloquence is addressed to reason, not to passion, and whose prophetic wisdom is verified before us this day? We have seen the "wise banished from the councils,"-we have witnessed the reverence for power in its "summary movements,"-we have recognised those "who flatter the people in order to betray them," -and we have now before us the fall of the Republic, even as they predicted that this would be the sure result.

We have seen that the Constitution of the United States is not democratic, that it entirely discards the most essential features of democracy, and that its cardinal principle is moderation. This, the politicians of the Union have spurned, and the main influence that now pervades all American affairs is that directly opposed to it, that of all the most baneful in politics-excess. An American, of great experience and judgment, expressed once, in our hearing, a fervent hope that this country would never follow the example. We have now

before us, and that legibly,-in handwriting upon the wall, the results of this principle of excess,— of liberty swollen into unbounded licence,-of personal independence exaggerated into worship of self,-of power extended to number instead of reposing on intelligence,-and we witness the result of committing the government of empires to the extravagance of theorists, and the excitement of declaimers, in place of the calm and measured judgment of experienced men.

In this country the working classes have many excellent qualities-industry, natural generosity, a love of fair play, a manly spirit. Yet, we know what manner of political institutions they frame for themselves when they have the power. Let any one study the physiology of a strike-the artful cunning of the demagogue that dupes the victimsthe tyranny they seek to exercise over the minority who desire to work-the ignorance of the true laws of political economy-the lurking desire to supplement inclination with force. To place power in their hands if they desire it is to place a knife in the hands of a child. Undoubtedly, the end of government is happiness. Would they, or their wives, or their children, be likely to command more real happiness if the affairs of the empire were guided on the political principles by which they attempt to regulate their own? First, give them intelligence that they may know how to employ that power wisely-then rejoice to see it in their possession. Before that, it would be

a gift to none more disastrous than themselves. In America, it is true that the populace have a far wider intelligence, they have much more cleverness, they are possessed of what we see one of their writers has termed "a preternatural sharpness." But underneath all this there is probably no more real wisdom, no greater amount of sound judgment. It is rather the precocity of the child than the wisdom of the man. And if we reflect upon the principles developed in a strike, we shall trace lineaments of the same portrait in American politics; we shall find indeed a very striking resemblance. There is the same influence of "sycophants," the same impatience of opposite opinion, the same contempt of economic laws, the same lurking desire to resort to the persuasion of force.

We conclude that these institutions, though they retain the form, have no longer the spirit of those designed by the fathers of the country. They no longer "insure justice," secure domestic tranquillity, or really further the "pursuit of happiness. The Union, a necessity when it was formed, has long ceased to be necessary. For very many years, though it has stimulated the rate of progress, yet underneath that superficial prosperity it has been working out that "degeneracy" and "demoralization " upon which we have read the testimony of the most eminent American authorities. If these be its results, showing that, whilst promoting the lower, it has debilitated all the nobler attributes

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of national life, we cannot but conclude that it has entirely ceased to conduce to the well-being of the nation. In this view, its disruption, though a rude and painful shock, must prove in the end an incalculable gain to both sections of the country. In what form the advantages of its termination may accrue, to each of them, will be subsequently considered. The next inquiry that naturally occurs, is the investigation of the causes that have produced that disruption at the present time.