any moment to destroy the charter of our liberties, of all your happiness, and of all your hope. They are either insane, or fatally bent on mischief." Insanity is a sad thing, but there is one form of it that is execrable-that is, sham insanity. One of the chief leaders of the Abolitionists, on the 4th July, 1856, undertook "to register a pledge before heaven to do what within him lay to effect the eternal overthrow of the blood-stained Union." This very man is now taking an active part in support of the war to maintain that "bloodstained" Union. Had Daniel Webster lived to this day, he would have seen that some of those he spoke of as insane, were only trading with a sham insanity.

It is very remarkable that some of this spirit of mere fanaticism has crossed over, and crept into the press of this country. We find it difficult to account for the sudden violence with which the subject has been discussed in some directions. At the worst, slavery is only the same thing now that it was last year in the Union. It is no peculiar iniquity of the Southern States. Brazil escapes these invectives. Spain is a slave-holding and slave-trading country. Turkey, our recent ally, is by no means free from it. France held slaves within the memory of all who are not children, and, as we know, has carried on a slave-trade in disguise within the last two years. Nay, are we, as a people, to forget that we too were slaveowners within a period not yet remote, and that

our own slavery was far more harsh than that of the Southern States, as the relative statistics clearly evidence? Are we to forget that our own hands inflicted this injury upon the people? They indeed might justly vent their indignation upon us, and cast on us the reproach, that we planted this evil in the soil. But what right have we to pour out invectives upon those who are simply the victims of our own wrong ? Is there an epithet in all the vocabulary discharged upon the South that does not reflect upon the memory of our own fathers? Is it a reasonable thing to visit others with denunciations because they do not terminate that which we cannot tell them how to end? The crime of slavery lies in the creation of it-that was our act. If some person should turn a flood of noxious gas into a chamber, and those within should reel and stagger under its poisonous effect, upon whom should our wrath be bestowed-and who might claim our consideration?

Further, are we really sincere in desiring to improve the condition of the negro, and to obtain for him, if it be a possible thing, the inestimable boon of freedom? If so, how is it to be accomplished? One thing is plain to all men, that the method of abuse employed has had but the natural effect of aggravating the evils of Slavery. With such experience before us, shall we pick up these old weapons to use them secondhand? Is the language of American Abolitionists such that we should desire to enrich our literature with imita

tions of it; or is their discretion so obvious that we do well to take their judgment as a guide? Is there no new path, as yet unexplored, that at least is not known to be hopeless?

There is such a course, which may be taken, too, with some rational prospect of success; for the secession of the South, followed, as it inevitably must be, by its independence, affords the first gleam of hope that has dawned in America upon the negro race. We have seen that the restoration of the Union would shut out all possibility of benefit to the slave. We have seen that the Constitution as it stands permits no hope; that both the President and the Congress have expressed their perfect willingness to add fresh props in support of slavery; that it now stands under the Constitution, so far as legislation extends, an irrevocable thing. But it must also be remembered that a restoration of the Union, were it to occur as the issue of the present war, would involve an arrangement of conditions of peace. However speedily that might happen, the cost and danger of the war to the North would have been sufficient. The policy of the Government would be to avert a fresh outbreak by every conceivable privilege. The supreme object would be to buy or bribe back the affections of the estranged partner, and efface the bitter memories of the past. Within limits, to be imposed only by a sense of shame, it is difficult to imagine any concessions too great to be granted. In all this there

is little hope for the slave. Every flaw in every link of his fetters would be welded anew. Indeed it is difficult to rise from the perusal of the evidence on this subject without the conviction that, but for the opprobrium of such an act, the Northern power would be ready, very ready, to assent to the reopening of the slave-trade, if that were demanded, as a bribe for return to the Union and to cordiality. The Abolitionists would be cast aside without a thought, but not extinguished. Ill-judged, fanatical, as the action of that party has been, there is truth at the bottom of its principles, and that cannot be extinguished. The South, therefore, would be in a condition to maintain its system, strengthened with additional powers, to wreak upon the slave, if so disposed, the rancour of defeat, whilst the old irritation would still be kept up as a sore, festering in its side. In all this the most sanguine enthusiast may abandon, without delay, any hope of advantage to the negro.

But a far different prospect is opened by another view of the future. If the Southern Confederacy maintains its independence, it will become its strongest desire to be received into the family of independent powers. It will clearly be allowable to our Government to decline to acknowledge that independence without express conditions in relation to slavery. Apart from the difficult subject of absolute emancipation (and in any rational view of the case, as necessary preliminaries to it), there

are many less striking, but really important changes, which are clearly practicable, and which would ameliorate at once the condition of the slave, lessen his degradation, and educate him for further advances into freedom. These changes could be made, too, without appreciable loss to the owner. In Cuba advantages are possessed by the negro unknown at present in America. There slavery has its rights, and amongst them the great right that any slave may demand that his value shall be appraised, and that, on providing the declared sum, he may tender it to his owner, and become a free man. And this right is no dead letter, but, on the contrary, in such active operation that, but for fresh importations from Africa, a large proportion of the black population of Cuba would become free within an early period. If such a system be in action without difficulty there, it must at least be possible in America. Again, an exchange from slavery into serfdom would involve no insuperable difficulties. To prevent the separation of husband from wife, or parent from child; to substitute task work for unmeasured labour; to organize some means for the prevention of cruelty-in short, to end the barbarities of the present condition of slavery; all this could be done with no positive detriment to the owner, and with immeasurable advantage to the slave.

If this were proposed to the Government of a reconstructed Union, the reply may be easily predicted. We should be warned of the presump