ay, even in Massachusettes.

I ask of these

gentlemen, does not at least one-third of the labour produce of every Southern slave ultimately lodge in the purse of the North? If the South works for itself it works also for the Northern merchant, and views his prosperity without grudging.

"9. Nor is it a trifling article of gain that arises from the expenditure of Southern visitors and Southern travellers, who spend their summers and their money in the North. The quarrelsome rudeness of Northern society is fast diminishing this source of expenditure among us. Sever the Union, and we relinquish it altogether. We can go to London, Paris, or Rome, as cheaply and as pleasantly as to Saratoga or Niagara.

"Such are some of the advantages which the North derives from a continuance of that Union which her fanatic population is so desirous to sever. A population with whom peace, humanity, mercy, oaths, contracts, and compacts,

pass for nothing-whose promises and engagements are as chaff before the wind-to whom bloodshed, robbery, assassination, and murder, are objects of placid contemplation—whose narrow creed of bigotry supercedes all the obligations of morality, and all the commands of positive law. With such men what valid compact can be made? The appeal must be to those who think that a deliberate compact is mutually binding on parties of parties of any and every religious creed. To such men I appeal, and ask ought you not resolutely to restore peace, and give the South confidence and repose?

"I have now lived twenty years in South Carolina, and have had much intercourse with her prominent and leading men; not a man among them is ignorant how decidedly, in most respects, the South would gain by a severance from the North, and how much more advantageous is this Union to the North than to the South. But I am deeply, firmly persuaded that there is not one man in South Carolina

that would move one step toward a separation, on acccount of the superior advantages the North derives from the Union. No Southern is actuated by these pecuniary feelings; no Southern begrudges the North her prosperity. Enjoy your advantages, gentlemen of the North, and much good may they do ye, as they have hitherto. But if these unconstitutional abolition attacks upon us, in utter defiance of the national compact, are to be continued, God forbid this Union should last another year.

"I am, sir, your obedient servant,

"THOMAS COOPER."

90

RELIGION IN AMERICA.

In theory nothing appears more rational than that every one should worship the Deity according to his own ideas-form his own opinion as to his attributes, and draw his own conclusions as to hereafter. An established church appears to be a species of coercion, not that you are obliged to believe in, or follow that form of worship, but that, if you do not, you lose your portion of certain advantages attending that form of religion which has been accepted by the majority and adopted by the government. In religion, to think for yourself wears the semblance of a luxury, and, like other luxuries, it is proportionably taxed.

And yet it would appear as if it never were intended that the mass should think for themselves,

as every thing goes on so quietly when other

people think for them, and every thing goes so wrong when they do think for themselves: in the first instance, where a portion of people think for the mass, all are of one opinion; whereas in the second, they divide and split into so many molecules, that they resemble the globules of water when expanded by heat, and like them are in a state of restlessness and excitement.

That the partiality shown to an established church creates some bitterness of feeling is most true, but, being established by law, is it not the partiality shown for the legitimate over the illegitimate? All who choose may enter into its portals, and if people will remain out of doors of their own accord, ought they to complain that they have no house over their heads? They certainly have a right to remain out of doors if they please, but whether they are justified in complaining afterwards is another question. Perhaps the unreasonableness of the demands of