dred thousand square miles of the finest land in the world, having kept uncultivated thrice as much more, having locked up in impenetrable barriers the richest metals on the continent, having produced an average of a hundred thousand white adults in every Southern State who cannot read or write, having kept the whole country in discord and hot water for two generations, have finally plunged it into civil war. Of the 348,000 owners of slaves in America, only 18,000, at the highest estimate, are loyal; and these, being generally in the Border States, where large plantations of slaves are not found, own an average of two and a half slaves apiece. One fortnight's expenses of the present war would pay $500 for each slave held by any person at present pretending to be loyal. A man once saw a fiery dragon descending the side of a distant mountain: starting back in terror, his eye reached a true point of perspective, and he perceived that the dragon was the minutest of spiders, which had swung itself down too close to his eye for right vision. II IN CHANCERY If there were no question of the suppression of a vast rebellion involved in the present relations of the nation with Slavery, it would be a momentous question how this small slaveholding interest has gained such an ascendency in the government that it is not held as attainted even by treason. Are these slaveholders, in number about equal to the population of one of our third-rate cities, the royal family of a king that can do no wrong? It is a question of some interest to thirty millions of men, who, fondly imagining themselves living under a democratic government, see their rulers suspending universal guaranties of Liberty rather than touch the right of eighteen thousand men to do wrong, pulling down the very rafters of the house, rather than destroy the rats' nests. Before this nation stand two classes of subjects. The one is a class of those who, having received every benefit at the hands of the nation, and no burden, have yet betrayed and wronged it, and inflicted every stab they could upon it. The other class is of those who have received at the hands of the nation nothing but degradation and wrong, who, having every reason to betray it, have yet never betrayed it or harmed it. And, lo, between these two the nation prefers to let its severest blow fall on the poor man it has wronged, even when he would befriend it, though it strengthen the arms which threaten its life and the lives of its bravest children! Can any one account for the infatuation which seizes our public men whenever they catch a glimpse of an African, or anything that concerns an African? How often have we got hold of some man whom we thought a freesoiler, and sent him to Washington only to see him at the first step on its threshold turn out a soiler of freedom! Æsop tells of a cat which had been transformed into the form of a woman. On one occasion, sitting at a table with a company, none of which suspected that she was really a cat, a mouse made its appearance on the floor; whereupon, forgetting the human part she was playing, this feline female leaped forward, upset the table, and devoured the mouse before the astonished company. Moral: Instinct will tell, under whatever forms. Never be sure that your politician, however transformed he may seem, is a genuine man, until you have seen a negro pass safely within reach of his official paw. Get close enough to the interior life of an American politician, and you will be pretty sure to find that it stands in his religious faith, that the stripes in our flag have a Swedenborgian correspondence to stripes on a black man's back. It is to be feared that in this they represent the prejudice or the indifference of the people. Lately I saw two negroes thrust from a car in New York, on a night so stormy and bitter that it would have been cruel to expel a brute. A dog in the same car slept at the feet of his master undisturbed. Thus is Slavery rotting the very heart of Manhood throughout this country. -- We have learned nothing of Slavery, if we have not learned this truth, to wit, that Slavery has no will of its own. There has been a delusion in this country, that Slavery is a free agent; and when, in Kansas, the ballot of Freedom was responded to by the torch and bowie-knife; when, in the whole nation, the ballot was replied to by a bomb into Fort Sumter, we began to awake to the perception that Slavery has no free choice. Slavery is more a slave than any man it fetters. It had no choice but to fire on Sumter. Chemistry does not more by fixed laws make a boulder, than by fixed laws Slavery hurls it at the head of Wendell Phillips. Slavery is in the coils of Fate and must, if it exists, obey its own dark laws. ---- The other day a man-and that is a rarer creature than is generally supposed-stood upon the soil of Virginia. Slavery said, "He is firm, truthful, intelligent, the gamest man I ever saw," then proceeded to hang him. Slavery would have hung him had it been Jesus Christ, because it must. The common sense of the country has already come to the conclusion that Slavery is the cause of the war. But it must be seen that war is the legitimate appendage and weapon of Slavery; that Slavery is perpetual war; that this war is but the effort to extend Slavery's already existing martial law over the entire government. Only by military power has Slavery been retained in this country. In the cities of the North, when its claim to some fugitive was to be asserted, we have seen its martial array; but this was only the cropping out of the constant state of things in the South. Nightly patrols; the punishment of men from the North without process of law; the frequent suppression of the usual laws for reasons of state; the suppression of all discussion concerning Slavery; - these are possible only where martial law is habitual. The present war is only the extension and exasperation of what has been all along the method in the war of the strong race against the weak in the South. It would seem, then, in the light of simple equity, that the natural method of suppressing Slavery's rebellion would be found in some way of dealing with Slavery itself. Nature has the penalties of violating her laws always in the direction of the transgression itself; a fall bruises, putting one's hand in fire is followed by a burn; and every habitual sin, as licentiousness or drunkenness, is followed by a train of diseases peculiarly its own, and growing out of its own organic character. There is no confusion of penalties; one is not burnt by falling, nor bruised by fire. This way we have of seizing the sword on every occasion to punish or meet indiscriminately all attacks is barbarous. In the laws of this universe, where every sin has its own penalty, the retribution never fails of being effect ual. The child which has once put its hand to the fire never repeats the experiment. Nations and men must translate these great laws of Nature, and then their defences will never be of doubtful strength. The rebellion of Slavery should at once have been followed by our only logical reply, the abolition of Slavery. Suppose that, in reply to that bomb which fell into Fort Sumter, our President had seized the pen, instead of the sword, and written such a proclamation as this: "Slavery, from being a domestic institution in certain States, with which the government had nothing to do, having become the common foe of all the States, with which the government has everything to do, it is hereby declared that all the slaves in this country are free, and they are hereby justified in whatever measures they may find necessary to maintain their freedom. Loyal masters are assured that they shall be properly compensated for losses resulting from this decree." Every rebel owning a slave, or living within miles of one, would, as by the wand of an enchanter, have remained spellbound at his fireside, where he ought to be. There could have been no war. III IN COMMON LAW DURING a residence of some years at Washington, I found that there was a clause in the Constitution used there, which I have vainly looked for in my copy: it ran as follows: "Art., Sec. -. Any legislation on the part of Congress liable to the charge of being morally right shall be |