Senate for its object, in which power depends upon the number of States. In the House of Representatives, the number of members from the Free States had long preponderated; but here the effect of numbers was neutralized by political skill. Had the North acted as one body, it would have been irresistible; but by its division into two parties, bitterly opposed, it was in the power of the South, by uniting with one of them, to outvote the other and command a constant majority.

The old Federalists of the first years of the Constitution became annihilated, as a party, during Jefferson's possession of power. Their principles were overwhelmed in the deluge of democracy, and appeared incapable of ever reviving. After a long period of apparent extinction, the spirit of Conservatism struggled again into being; for the Whig party, the successors of the Federalists, were the real Conservatives of the Union. Under that title they obtained a momentary triumph in the election of Harrison, but they soon fell back powerless as before, to be resuscitated under a new name-that of Republicans. This party comprises the great mass of the intellect and the wealth of the North. It is also the Protectionist party. Its leaning is in favour of a strong Government, and whatever there may be of aristocracy in the North belongs to it. To this party, the South, whose system as regards the ruling political class is essentially aristocratic, should naturally have been allied. But here arises a singular result of the complexity

of American Government. The aristocracy of the South act in conjunction, not with the conservatism, but with the democracy of the North. From the first, the Southern States anticipated danger at the hands of a strong Government, which might pass into other, hands than their own. Slavery was originally on the defensive, and, under the shield of their own State Governments, they were in safety; all beyond was insecure. They were the supporters of State rights as opposed to the powers of the Central Government; Conservatives themselves, they became the opponents of Conservative principles in the politics of the Federal body.

By means of this alliance the South maintained its original political supremacy, not only long after the change in relative population had removed its solid foundation, but down to the present day. In this lies the real force of the recent election of Mr. Lincoln. It is idle to suppose that the South would have encountered the dangers and horrors of civil war simply because another candidate was preferred to its own. The result of an election may cause a riot, but to produce a revolution-a general movement of a people-there must have been causes long enough in action, and powerful enough to have penetrated the whole public mind. At the last election there were four candidatesBreckenridge, Douglas, Bell, and Lincoln. Breckenridge was the candidate of the cotton States, and he would have been rejected by the election of either Bell or Douglas. But no one will assert

that those States would have seceded had their candidate been defeated by either of those competitors. Again, the South had previously suffered defeat at presidential elections without the sound of secession being heard. Why, then, the effect on the present occasion ? Because, for the first time in the history of the United States, the election of the President was purely geographical; it was not a defeat at the hands of a party, but at those of the Northern power. Every Northern State had voted for Mr. Lincoln; every Southern State had voted against him. It was an act which severed North from South as with the clean cut of a knife. Upon such a division Jefferson remarked long ago : "A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated, and every irritation will make it deeper and deeper." There is a truth in these words which gave the force to this event; it could neither be obliterated nor revoked. The Northern States had 183 votes; the Southern, if unanimous, 120. Hence it was plain that if the North chose to act in a mass, its power was irresistible. At last it did act in a mass. Upon that event political power departed from the South, and departed for ever; the substance had long been gone-now the shadow followed it.

It is the incurable nature of the fact that gives so crushing a weight to it. What amendment of a Constitution can alter the laws of growth in

population? What political contrivance can control the effects of climate and of latitude? It is indisputable that the superiority of the North in population will not only continue, but constantly augment. The transfer of supremacy to it, when once made, must be irrevocable. And it is necessary to consider that to the mind, and in the sincere (though it may be erroneous) convictions of the Southerner, this transfer is far more than the loss of prestige, of influence, or the emoluments of power. The election of Mr. Lincoln represents to him the determination of the North, as a body, to act upon the question of Slavery, in opposition to, and disregard of, the Constitution that protects it. It is true that such action would be at first indirect by excluding him from the territories which belong as much to the South as to the North-by surrounding him with a cordon of Free States-by compressing him--by suffocating him. Such a process of strangulation is perhaps as painful to look forward to as any more speedy manner of extinction, and to the mind of the Southerner it is extinction, in a political sense, that he foresees. He anticipates injury to his material interests at the hands of the Northern monopolists, but in the action of the Abolitionists now impelling those in power, he forebodes the destruction of his property, the ruin of his State, and the danger of his life. He sees in their success the prostration of his country into the barbarism of Hayti, with all the horrors that accompanied that terrible event. There exists,

therefore, in his view of the case, every incentive to the strongest feelings and to resolute action. Looking at the election of Mr. Lincoln from a European point of view, it was an ordinary, an insignificant event; looking at it as seen by the Southerner, it was the knell of the departing independence and welfare of his portion of the Continent.

As it was the "cry" of that election, let us briefly consider this question of the admission of Slavery into the territories. We shall find in it an illustration of the argument, that the action of the South, on this subject, though in appearance aggressive, has really been in self-defence, as a means of maintaining its political status, against the growth of the North. Between two rival powers, the result is obvious, if the one be rapidly growing, and the other remain stationary. But there are those who have confounded the idea of a means with that of an object. Politically, as in competition with the North, it is of great importance whether New Mexico, or Arizona, be admitted as a Slave or as a Free State. At once, thereupon, its vote would be as effective in the Senate, as that of the Empire State, New York. But apart from this consideration, what possible advantage can the Southern planter derive from this extension into new regions? He is a grower of cotton. Will it increase his profits to have more cotton produced, to compete with him? He owns a large estate. It cannot benefit him that