inaugurated, what horrors may not fill up the interval to its bloody close!

Where, then, will stand the discordant parties and interests which have inaugurated this war upon the South? When the battle would be fiercest, and the issue the most doubtful, would England, in deference to the desires of her anti-slavery propagandists, stretch forth her arm to aid the North in the accomplishment of a victory, which would strike down at one blow that system of labour upon the products of which so many millions of her subjects are dependent for their daily bread? This interrogatory may not now be answered. She may hold herself in the position of an unfriendly neutrality towards both; but the England of to-day would not be the England of the past, if she permitted the sympathies or the sensibilities of her 'philanthropists' to mislead her at such a crisis.

As warmly as the political Abolition party of England has espoused the cause of the Republican party, it must not be supposed that they desire the immediate abolition of slavery in America, for such a consummation would find them unprepared to meet the crisis which would follow. Hence they have thrown their influence upon the side of the Republican party, under a tacit understanding among the leaders of each, that the process of abolitionising the South shall be sure but slow; thus affording

what they believe will be ample time for Indian tropical productions to be augmented, as those in the Slave States of America diminish.

From this reference to the internal and external adversaries of the Slave States of America, it will be observed that they differ essentially in the immediate objects which they hope to accomplish when their victory shall have been achieved; and that there exists amongst them but a single element or class which may be fairly presumed to be actuated exclusively by conscientious and philanthropic convictions. This, however, is made up of the radicals, socialists, agrarians, and fanatics, both in religion and politics, to whose madness no response of reason would be available, but whose folly would of itself defeat their purposes but for the direction given to them by other, and cooler, and wiser heads.

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But of all these opposing influences, it cannot be questioned that the London Times' is right in its rather boastful declaration, that if we were to 'blot out England, and English sympathies, and English power from the map of the world, the battle between the North and South would be fought on very different terms.' The indirect influence of the British Anti-slavery party in moulding public opinion without, and its direct influence within, in giving consistency, point, and unity to the efforts of those who, whether ignorantly or advisedly, perform for it the

services of friends and allies, render it apparent that if the Southern States of the American Union can defeat the purposes of that party, the battle against their enemies is already half won.

I have thus hastily glanced at the different interests which are arrayed in hostile attitude against the Slave States, and I have referred impartially to what may be fairly presumed to be the moving cause of the opposition of each. In making these general classifications, however, I do not mean to say that there are not many individual exceptions, who are actuated by motives different from those which I have assigned as common to the party which seeks the overthrow of slavery in the South. But it is to be noted that all the enemies of the existing institution of slavery in the Southern States are from without. The assaults thereon emanate from those only who live under other governments—who are not themselves subject to the evils of which they complain, and who may perpetuate the exemption by remaining beyond the boundaries of its influence.

LETTER IV.

Opposition to abstract Slavery resolved into opposition to Slavery in America, without considering the circumstances of its existenceSlavery Romances have misled the Public Mind-The manifest injustice of crediting them as History-The attitude of the present adversaries of Slavery in times past-Achievements of African Slavery in America.

IT is a truth not to be controverted, that the predominating sentiment of the civilised world at the present day is adverse to the existence of slavery. The instincts of an enlightened humanity are undeniably opposed to that condition of society which is supposed to exist as a necessary concomitant of slavery, and hence many are found to condemn its existence in America without duly considering that when two races so different and so unequal as those which inhabit the Southern American States are thrown together, there cannot be established between them the relations which may and should exist between different classes of the same race.

Under the lead and direction chiefly of the Antislavery party of Great Britain, this theoretical opposition to abstract slavery has been resolved most unjustly into a feeling of hostility to the institution known under that name, now existing in the United

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States. This feeling has received from time to time fresh impulse from the slanderous publications of British tourists, who have more intellect than honesty, and a more ardent desire to reap a harvest of gold by pandering to the prejudices and vices of their readers, than the meagre rewards bestowed upon those who communicate unpalateable truths. Added to these are the productions which, with more or less of literary merit, have emanated from native Americans who desire by this means to ingratiate themselves into the favour of the British Anti-slavery party.

A discriminating mind, in estimating the value of these productions, should remember that they emanate only from those who are wholly unacquainted by practical knowledge with the system they pretend to explain. They are those whose whole lives have been spent in an atmosphere of hostility and hatred to the 'institution,' and who have visited for a brief period the locality where it existed, not to discover truth but from exaggerated and isolated facts to find material for the support of their theory out of which to fashion a 'selling book.'

Professedly illustrating the workings of the institution of slavery, all who are familiar with the subject know them to be slanders, and libels, and caricatures upon truth. Even as monstrous exceptions to the general condition of the slave and his