classmates, old comrades, and old friends array themselves in deadly strife, and blot out the remembrance of their former amity in blood. Sons of the same loins have sought to become each other's slayers, and have, perchance, succeeded. The short, fierce alienation of this war has diverted from each other men who drew infant life from the same breasts, and whose blood has been again mingled in the same Aceldama. Surely it is high time that the combatants laid it to heart. Whether fighting for empire or for negro emancipation, it is equally time that the North stayed its hand. The remedy is worse than the disease, the punishment more costly than the crime.

We shall not dwell upon the extraordinary negligence of the North as to the institutions of its own freedom, upon its surrender of the Habeas Corpus Act, nor its infatuated and unique exultation in the fact that it is spending about two millions of dollars per diem upon the hopeless task of Southern subjugation. But we should certainly like to remind it that it is engaged in an effort whose success would be more costly than its defeat. The South is in earnest, in deadly earnest. It has been so from the beginning. Nothing but enormous force can possibly subdue it: nothing but enormous force could retain it in subjection. It would have to be perpetually reconquered. The blaze of its patriotism stamped out in this direction would burst forth with still fiercer heat in that; and while the seemingly successful quenchers were in conflict with the second, the third, or the hundredth fire, the first would rekindle from its ashes and would flash from the Potomac to the Mississippi the news of its invincible life. Hitherto America has feared and discountenanced even such employment of regular troops as to us, who are affected with the common contagion of European distrust, appears indispensable even in peace; but should the North conquer the South (Deus avertat omen !) it will need not a permanent peace establishment like our own, but an army proportionately large with the territory to be watched, and an expenditure that would suffice for a European power at war.

Another consequence of Northern success would be its own demoralization. Nothing but despotism could retain the recovered South, as even Professor Cairnes virtually admits; and of all despotisms, a democratic despotism has ever been the worst and the most cruel. The effects upon every part and ramification of the body politic would follow with proportionate rapidity and certainty, and public virtue would as inevitably be depraved as it once was depraved in Rome. When we remember too, that, in Rome at least, the tone of that virtue was never effectually recovered, and what was the consequence

Separation for the Advantage of Both.

of its loss, again and with yet deeper fervour we say, Di avertat omen! Unfortunately for ourselves, and far mo unfortunately for many others, we need not wait for so improbable an event as the establishment of Northern despotism over the Southern States, to witness the beginnings of the deterioration we have feared. It is already patent. We behold the revolting spectacle of a single city growing rich by gigantic crime, and hounding on the perpetrators with a view to grow still richer. New York drew large revenues from the Slave States prior to the war-not to say from the slave trade-and it now draws large revenues from the war itself. Money was never more plentiful there than it is now, and New York was never gayer. It squanders greenbacks and 5-twenties with prodigal hand, and feasts, dresses, dances, spends, as though this horrid carnival of war were the carnival of a Transatlantic Venice.

In a state of things which in America has done so much, and in England has done not a little in some quarters, to usurp men's reasons and to prejudice, almost to incapacitate their judgments, it is perhaps vain to hope that we may not be supposed in any way hostile to the Northern and Free States of America because, in this particular case, we trust they may fail. We certainly do so trust; nor do we know of any more right a man can have to infer from that the hostility we disavow, than his father could have had to infer there was treachery and treason to England when, in the War of American Independence, our own fathers hoped that England might fail. Quite as truly as we believe it would be for the advantage of the South to achieve a successful separation, we believe it would be for the advantage of the North that such separation should take place. According to its own account, prior to the breaking out of the war, it lost more than it gained by its connection with the South; and the South appeared, not only to thoughtful men in Boston, but to intelligent observers generally, to be decidedly less able to dispense with the North than was the North to dispense with the South. The facts and truths upon which this view is founded we are compelled to admit, and the conclusion which is based on them we fully adopt. If the Free States of America, which set us the example and taught us the lesson, have not changed their minds, why any longer this sickening calamity of civil war? They can have peace whenever they like, yet they insist upon war. They may very likely have been under Providence the avengers of long crime, but their conduct may surely be not the less a crime on that account. They have made the South hate and despise them. They have convinced it that it wars for all that is worth fighting for. And hence its

unanimity. We are not concerned with the propriety of the conclusion it has drawn, but only with the conclusion itself. And the South regards the war, we are assured, not only by the ex-Minister to Portugal but by witnesses of all classes, by the amplest public testimony of its journals, by the still more practical testimony of its sacrifices and achievements, and by testimony from other sources no less authoritative, as 'purely vindictive and tyran'nical;' as a 'mere war of brute and brutal force, for the 'compulsion of one great people by another to submit to a yoke 'of alien government abhorred by the resisting people with the 'intensest degree of unanimous hatred '-language which is strong, but which is not stronger than the sentiment it endeavours to describe. And in what respect is this characterization of the war overdrawn? It is the most heart-rending, and we cannot help thinking the most guilty war the world has known. It is too late to go back to the origin of it. Its origin dates more remotely than the pro-Northern party in England finds it convenient to admit. We make no attempt to apportion the respective shares of guilt as to the past, but for the future the guilt of the continuance of the war must rest with the North. The South longs for peace. It is brought far past the verge of bankruptcy towards ruin. But what matter? Bankruptcy does not shrivel a nation's sinews, nor does commercial ruin diminish its fighting powers. That greybacks are not good money in Broadway does not make Confederate cannon less formidable across the Potomac. And that General Lee's soldiers march sleeveless and ragged, often hungry, and sometimes shoeless, does not make their masses less terrible when launched against Federal lines, or less solid and invincible when they stand behind works of their own. Is it credible for a moment that if the South did not, rightly or wrongly, believe itself fighting for all that is worth living for, it would fight as we have seen?

'As for the pressure of the hardships and impoverishment of war upon Southern families and homes, no amount of such suffering pressing upon such a people can produce any other effect than to embitter their exasperation and to nerve their determination. They have already learned how easy it is, after all, when a nation is animated with a great passion for patriotism, to bear cheerfully, nay, even exultingly, the extremest of personal privations. Tens of thousands of the best gentlemen of the land carry muskets in the ranks, and march to eager battle with the bare soles of their feet hardened by use into insensibility; while hundreds of thousands of delicate ladies submit, proudly and without a murmur, to every form of domestic hardship. All the women in the South weave and work for the soldiers in the field. Inexhaustible supplies of

Separation the Way to Emancipation.

233

Indian meal, rice, and bacon, where other food is inaccessible, suffice, and must continue amply to suffice, for such sustenance as they are more than satisfied with.'-Mr. O'Sullivan's Letter, p. 13.

Prior to this war the Free States have declared, in almost so many words, to the Slave States, 'It is we who have stood 'between you, with your peculiar domestic institution, and the 'indignation of all Europe; and but for us you would have been 'powerless to maintain it.' We accept those words as true. Let the Slave States go, and slavery must sooner or later go with them. It is not Secession, but Reunion, which will, as we deliberately believe, defer the day of complete emancipation. The slave trade is felony in England, and all the great powers in Europe are in league for its suppression. The Congress of the United States forbade it by law the moment the Constitution would permit the passing of the act; namely, in 1808. And that trade, it is surely not too much to say, can never be revived. In some way the problem of negro freedom will be practically worked out. Let the war by all means be stopped. That is the first want. It has been a hard and fearful lesson for both North and South. But let England stand aside from all save the steps which may reasonably appear to favour the restoration of peace. If 'Recognition' is one of the steps, there is no reason in slavery why Recognition should be refused. For nations in dealing with nations are incompetent to take cognizance of moral questions, and in practice never do so. If they were to begin such a policy, where is it to end? Let us hope that when the time of this indignation shall be overpast, its lessons may never be forgotten, and that a brighter and better future may be in store for the unhappy African race (which we are for a thousand reasons confident will one day vindicate the freedom it must win), and may also be in store for the Unions of the Federal and the Confederated States.

EPILOGUE

ON

AFFAIRS.

'POLAND-I know nothing of any Poland beyond Leicester Square.' Such was the generous utterance of Mr. John Bright to the writer of these lines when the Crimean war had reached its darkest hour. Russia finds, to her cost, that there is a Poland still, and Europe feels that there is, and ought to be, a Poland still. Not only does the Poland of 1815 live, the Poland of 1772 is instinct with life. The Three Powers have sent their Notes. Other powers have remonstrated on the side of the oppressed. Russia needs be omnipresent either to meet insurrection or to prevent it. Her deeds, if only the half of what is attributed to her is true, are such as to proclaim her unworthy of empire.

The fall of Puebla has freed the hands of the Emperor of France. That fact should influence the deliberations at St. Petersburg. It is time that rule after the Tartar fashion should come to an end in Europe. Russia must learn to accept that fact, or quit her hold on some of her fairest provinces. We wish to see Polish liberty guaranteed by the justice and humanity of Russia. We do not wish to see another war of liberation left to the sword of France.

Over India a brighter light is shining than has been seen there since the British flag first floated on the shores of that vast peninsula. But the cloud still hangs about Lancashire, and humanity and statesmanship will still have their work to do in that changed county.

In ecclesiastical affairs there are signs of movement. The great question of 1862 was the case of subscription as imposed and stereotyped just two centuries before. Nonconformists then made their deliverance on that subject. It has since passed into other hands. Lords and Commons have been obliged to look at it, to discourse about it, and to admit that something should be done. Protest from without is suspended. But disturbance from within is become more diffused and more formidable. Thanks to the training and education of three centuries, the national mind has outgrown the leading-strings which Edward VI. and Elizabeth placed about it. When the state ceded free thought and free utterance, it ceded that the question of a national Church should be a question of time. When it becomes necessary to establish everything or to establish nothing, it is not difficult to see which side of the alternative will be deemed the most reasonable.