commissary stores, but it is that which supplies both. It is not forts or entrenchments, but it serves to build the one, and throw up the other. We cannot more effectually cripple the resources' of the enemy, than by destroying it.

"Nor is this all. The dangerous character of this property is attested by the enemy himself. He acknowledges that Jefferson prophesied truly, when he predicted that this was the rock upon which the old Union would split. The owners of these claims themselves declare them to have been the immediate cause of the war. What chance have we of domestic tranquillity while they exist? There is-in the nature of things there can be- -no security for peace or loyalty from a slave state.

"Does international law exempt such claims from seizure? Are they not to be reckoned as part of an enemy's property? Vattel expressly tells us :-Among the things belonging to the enemy are likewise incorporeal thingsall his rights, claims, and debts.'

"Therefore, the Confiscation Act, including its ninth Jection, already quoted, is in strict accordance with the laws of war.

"Therefore, too, our Commander-in-Chief was in his right when he took and cancelled the claims to service and labour in the insurrectionary states. The law of nations sanctions the Emancipation Proclamation. By that instrument three millions of slaves were legally set free. The deed is done righteously, lawfully done. It is true that many of these people are working as slaves still; but in the eye of the law, they are freedmen. Our own right to freedom is not better than theirs.

"This deed, demanded alike by prudence and justice, forms an era in our national history. It severed the past from the future. It substantially changed, of necessity, the policy of the government. In the early stage of the war, Congress proposed, and the majority of the nation expected, as the issue of this contest, a mere rehabilitation, with Southern laws and Southern institutions re-acknowledged in their pristine form. Again and again warning was given, and the return of the insurgents to their loyal duty on these conditions was urged upon them. But their hearts were hardened, and they

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would not. By their obstinate perversity they closed the door against themselves. They persevered in their conspiracy against public law until Emancipation became an imperative measure of self-defence. Let us not take credit to ourselves for generous philanthropy. The South, reckless and blind, was the unwitting agent of human liberty. And thus, in the providence of God, the very effort, by armed treason, to perpetuate an abuse has been the means of effecting its eradication.

"That which might have been can no longer be. When politicians talk now of reconstruction, with the 'peculiar institution' of the South left intact, the words are nothing else but a mischievous mystification. If the South conquer, she may, by superior force, hold as slaves the negroes who shall remain to her, though by our laws they are free. But for us there is no longer a peculiar institution in any of the insurrectionary states to be left intact. We can build up anew that peculiar institution; not legally, it is very true, for neither the President, nor Congress, nor any judicial tribunal in the land, has any more authority to consign a freeman to slavery than they have to hang him without crime or trial; but we may build it up, if we have power enough, or connive at it if we are shameless enough; just as a highwayman may seize a purse, or a burglar carry off a basket of silver-ware."

CHAPTER II.

THE POPULATION WHO HAVE AN INTEREST AND VOICE IN THE QUESTION.

THE Census Tables in "The National Almanac and Annual Record" of the United States for 1863, supplies an analysis of the nationality and occupation of immigrants arriving in that country from 1820 to 1860. Among the curiosities are the facts that the class containing 872,317, the greatest number, is designated "labourers;" while the class of "farmers" numbers 764,837. "Mechanics" are reckoned 407,524, besides shoemakers, tailors, weavers, spinners, engineers, printers, painters, masons, hatters, millers, and butchers, altogether 26,175. There are 29,484 mariners; 39,967 miners; 5246 seamstresses and milliners; actors are 588; clerks, 3882; lawyers and physicians, 9875; manufacturers, 3120; teachers, 1528; artists, 2490; musicians, 729, and clergymen, 4326. It might be an interesting question which collegiate institutions supplied the greatest proportion of these emigrant clergymen. Bakers are computed, 1272; servants, 49,494; other occupations, 26,206; and 2,978,599, have no specific occupation.

During the period from 1820 till 1860 the total number of aliens who entered the United States was 5,062,414; while others of American descent, returned to their birthplace, were 397,007. Great Britain, including England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and British America, contributed as their quota 2,866,016 of this vast mass. Germany and Prussia sent 1,546,476; France, 208,063; China, 41,443,

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and the West Indies, 40,487; Norway and Sweden, 36,129; Spain, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Portugal, altogether contributed 55,853. But Poland has sent only 1659, and Russia, 1374; while Switzerland swelled her numbers to 37,733, and Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, etc., added 13,920. South and Central America gave 24,935; besides other fractional items; 180,854 are reported as having arrived without stating from what country they had departed; many of them, no doubt, were wives and children. One of the ingenious defenders of the South assumes, with more plausibility than truth, that these races commingled give as their product "two peoples, originating from ancestors so different and with such differences of opinions, habits, institutions, laws, and feelings, and occupying for CENTURIES (!) regions so distinct they could hardly be expected to live together peaceably for ever." Surely the premise does not warrant so curt a conclusion.

An American commentator, in the most dispassionate manner, criticises the alleged phenomena and their physical antagonism :

"Nothing can be more absurd than the drawing of this imaginary line of races between the Northern and Southern states; it is very true, indeed, that Virginia was first settled by the younger sons of English gentlemen, persons who, cut off by the laws of primogeniture from inheriting their paternal estates, sought to found others for themselves in the New World, and, regarding manual labour as disgraceful to gentle blood, gladly welcomed the Dutch captain who, in August, 1620, introduced the first cargo of Africans, in whom the colonists thought they discerned a better substitute for the English peasantry than the comparatively few and discontented whites they had been able to "spirit" away from the mother country. It is equally true that Massachusetts was first settled by the Puritans, men in whose souls the spirit of Hampden and Cromwell was reflected, men of a stern theology, who had small love for kings and aristocrats, and who regarded all toil as honourable,-men who had none of the advantages of the settlers

of South Carolina, who enjoyed the partnership and patronage of Shaftesbury, Monk, Clarendon, Ashley Cooper, and other favourite courtiers whose rapacity obtained from the debauched Charles II. the grant of all lands lying between twenty-nine degrees and thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. But to contend that the two Anglican classes-for they can scarcely be described as races-which thus first settled the English possessions in America have ever since maintained their distinction, and now divide the country between North and South, is simple folly. Ten other and mainly distinct peoples have been mingling their blood and ideas with the two antagonistic English stocks. The waves of Dutch, German, Irish, Scotch, French, and Sclavonic races have flowed over the South as well as over the North. Before the close of the seventeenth century the French Huguenots had settled in both sections of the country. Massachusetts owes to a Huguenot the far-famed Fanuil Hall, in Boston, fondly termed 'the cradle of liberty;' while in South Carolina, in the revolution, it was a Huguenot, Judith Manigault, who gave his entire fortune for the service of the country which had given his mother a shelter from the religious fury of Louis XIV. America presents the spectacle, not of two peoples' 'occupying for centuries' distinct regions, but of twelve or fifteen peoples who, constantly intermingling for less than two centuries, have formed a peculiar race, observing no geographical boundaries, and divided in opinion now only upon one question, i.e., the dignity or the disgracefulness of labour."

The connection between English Puritans and Nonconformists, the earliest settlers in the Massachusetts Bay, and the present population, not alone of New England, but of a large portion of the Western states, deserves more than a passing allusion. As old England inspired her children, who peopled Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, with their endurance and love of liberty, so has her descendant animated the vigorous and enterprising colonists in Western lands. It may be true that Illinois and Indiana received their early settlers from among the poor whites of Kentucky; and that, having