That the position is therefore criminal and damnable, I am not now disposed to take upon myself to assert.

The question of slavery in America cannot be handled fully and fairly by any one who is afraid to go back upon the subject, and take its whole history since one man first claimed and exercised the right of forcing labour from another man. I certainly am afraid of any such task; but I believe that there has been no period yet, since the world's work began, when such a practice has not prevailed in a large portion, probably in the largest portion of the world's work-fields. As civilization has made its progress, it has been the duty and delight, as it has also been the interest of the men at the top of affairs, not to lighten the work of the men below, but so to teach them that they should recognize the necessity of working without coercion. Emancipation of serfs and thralls, of bondsmen and slaves, has always meant this, that men having been so taught, should then work without coercion. As men become educated and aware of the nature of the tenure on which they hold their life, they learn the fact that work is a necessity for them, and that it is better to work without coercion than with it. When men have learned this they are fit for emancipation, but they are hardly fit till they have learned so much.

In talking or writing of slaves, we always now think of the negro slave. Of us Englishmen it must at any rate be acknowledged that we have done what in us lay to induce him to recognize this necessity for labour. At any rate we acted on the presumption that he would do so, and gave him his liberty throughout all our lands at a cost which has never yet been reckoned up in pounds, shillings, and pence. The cost never can be reckoned up, nor can the gain which we achieved in purging ourselves from the degradation and demoralization of such employment. We come into court with clean hands, having done all that lay with us to do to put down slavery both at home and abroad. But when we enfranchised the negroes, we did so with the intention, at least, that they should work as free men. Their share of the bargain in that respect they have declined to keep, wherever starvation has not been the result of such resolve on their part; and from the date of our emancipation, seeing the position which the negroes now hold with us, the southern States of America have learned to regard slavery as a permanent institution, and have taught themselves to regard it as a blessing, and not as a curse.

Negroes were first taken over to America because the white man could not work under the tropical heats, and because the

native Indian would not work. The latter people has been, or soon will be, exterminated,-polished off the face of creation, as the Americans say,-which fate must, I should say in the long run, attend all non-working people. As the soil of the world is required for increasing population, the non-working people must go. And so the Indians have gone. The negroes under compulsion did work, and work well; and under their hands vast regions of the western tropics became fertile gardens. The fact that they were carried up into northern regions which from their nature did not require such aid, that slavery prevailed in New York and Massachusetts, does not militate against my argument. The exact limits of any great movement will not be bounded by its purpose. The heated wax which you drop on your letter spreads itself beyond the necessities of your seal. That these negroes would not have come to the western world without compulsion, or having come, would not have worked without compulsion, is, I imagine, acknowledged by all. That they have multiplied in the western world and have there become a race happier, at any rate in all the circumstances of their life, than their still untamed kinsmen in Africa, must also be acknowledged. Who, then, can dare to wish that all that has been done by the negro immigration should have remained undone?

The name of slave is odious to me. If I know myself I would not own a negro though he could sweat gold on my behoof. I glory in that bold leap in the dark which England took with regard to her own West Indian slaves. But I do not see the less clearly the difficulty of that position in which the southern States have been placed; and I will not call them wicked, impious, and abominable, because they now hold by slavery, as other nations have held by it at some period of their career. It is their misfortune that they must do so now,—now, when so large a portion of the world has thrown off the system, spurning as base and profitless all labour that is not free. It is their misfortune, for henceforth they must stand alone, with small rank among the nations, whereas their brethren of the North will still "flame in the forehead of the morning sky."

When the present constitution of the United States was written, the merit of which must probably be given mainly to Madison and Hamilton, Madison finding the French democratic element, and Hamilton the English conservative element,-this question of slavery was doubtless a great trouble. The word itself is not mentioned in the constitution. It speaks not of a slave, but of a 'person held to service or labour." It neither

66

sanctions, nor forbids slavery. It assumes no power in the matter of slavery; and under it, at the present moment, all Congress voting together, with the full consent of the legislatures of thirty-three States, could not constitutionally put down slavery in the remaining thirty-fourth State. In fact the constitution ignored the subject.

But nevertheless Washington, and Jefferson from whom Madison received his inspiration, were opposed to slavery. I do not know that Washington ever took much action in the matter, but his expressed opinion is on record. But Jefferson did so throughout his life. Before the declaration of independence he endeavoured to make slavery illegal in Virginia. In this he failed, but long afterwards, when the United States was a nation, he succeeded in carrying a law by which the further importation of slaves into any of the States was prohibited after a certain year-1820. When this law was passed, the framers of it considered that the gradual abolition of slavery would be secured. Up to that period the negro population in the States had not been self-maintained. As now in Cuba, the numbers had been kept up by new importations, and it was calculated that the race, when not recruited from Africa, would die out. That this calculation was wrong we now know, and the breeding-grounds of Virginia have been the result.

At that time there were no cotton-fields. Alabama and Mississippi were outlying territories. Louisiana had been recently purchased, but was not yet incorporated as a State. Florida still belonged to Spain, and was all but unpopulated. Of Texas no man had yet heard. Of the slave States, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia were alone wedded to slavery. Then the matter might have been managed. But under the constitution as it had been framed, and with the existing powers of the separate States, there was not even then open any way by which slavery could be abolished other than by the separate action of the States; nor has there been any such way opened since. With slavery these southern States have grown and become fertile. The planters have thriven, and the cottonfields have spread themselves. And then came emancipation in the British islands. Under such circumstances and with such a lesson, could it be expected that the southern States should learn to love abolition?

It is vain to say that slavery has not caused secession, and that slavery has not caused the war. That, and that only has been the real cause of this conflict, though other small collateral issues may now be put forward to bear the blame. Those

other issues have arisen from this question of slavery, and are incidental to it and a part of it. Massachusetts, as we all know, is democratic in its tendencies, but South Carolina is essentially aristocratic. This difference has come of slavery. A slave country, which has progressed far in slavery, must be aristocratic in its nature,-aristocratic and patriarchal. A large 'slave-owner from Georgia may call himself a democrat,-may think that he reveres republican institutions, and may talk with American horror of the thrones of Europe; but he must in his heart be an aristocrat. We, in England, are apt to speak of republican institutions, and of universal suffrage, which is perhaps the chief of them, as belonging equally to all the States. In South Carolina there is not and has not been any such thing. The electors for the President there are chosen not by the people but by the legislature; and the votes for the legislature are limited by a high property qualification. A high property qualification is required for a member of the House of Representatives in South Carolina;-four hundred freehold acres of land and ten negroes is one qualification. Five hundred pounds clear of debt is another qualification;— for, where a sum of money is thus named, it is given in English money. Russia and England are not more unlike in their political and social feelings than are the real slave States and the real free-soil States. The gentlemen from one and from the other side of the line have met together on neutral ground, and have discussed political matters without flying frequently at each other's throats, while the great question on which they differed was allowed to slumber. But the awakening has been coming by degrees, and now the South had felt that it was come. Old John Brown, who did his best to create a servile insurrection at Harper's Ferry, has been canonized through the North and West, to the amazement and horror of the South. The decision in the 'Dred Scott' case, given by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, has been received with shouts of execration through the North and West. The southern gentry have been Uncle-Tommed into madness. It is no light thing to be told daily by your fellow-citizens, by your fellow-representatives, by your fellow-senators, that you are guilty of the one damning sin that cannot be forgiven. All this they could partly moderate, partly rebuke, and partly bear as long as political power remained in their hands; but they have gradually felt that that was going, and were prepared to cut the rope and run as soon as it was gone.

Such, according to my ideas, have been the causes of the

war. But I cannot defend the South. As long as they could be successful in their schemes for holding the political power of the nation, they were prepared to hold by the nation. Immediately those schemes failed, they were prepared to throw the nation overboard. In this, there has undoubtedly been treachery as well as rebellion. Had these politicians been honest, though the political growth of Washington has hardly admitted of political honesty,-but had these politicians been even ordinarily respectable in their dishonesty, they would have claimed secession openly before Congress, while yet their own President was at the White House. Congress would not have acceded. Congress itself could not have acceded under the constitution; but a way would have been found, had the southern States been persistent in their demand. A way, indeed, has been found; but it has lain through fire and water, through blood and ruin, through treason and theft, and the downfall of national greatness. Secession will, I think, be accomplished, and the southern Confederation of States will stand something higher in the world than Mexico and the republics of Central America. Her cotton monopoly will have vanished, and her wealth will have been wasted.

I think that history will agree with me in saying that the northern States had no alternative but war. What concession could they make? Could they promise to hold their peace about slavery? And had they so promised, would the South have believed them? They might have conceded secession; that is, they might have given all that would have been demanded. But what individual chooses to yield to such demands; and if not an individual,-then what people will do so? But in truth they could not have yielded all that was demanded. Had secession been granted to South Carolina and Georgia, Virginia would have been coerced to join those States by the nature of her property, and with Virginia Maryland would have gone, and Washington, the capital. What may be the future line of division between the North and the South I will not pretend to say; but that line will probably be dictated by the North. It may still be hoped that Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland will go with the North, and be rescued from slavery. But had secession been yielded, had the prestige of success fallen to the lot of the South, those States must have become southern.

While on this subject of slavery-for in discussing the cause of the war, slavery is the subject that must be discussed-I cannot forbear to say a few words about the negroes of the