writers or speakers, because, being an ardent partisan of the South, we preferred to quote from those free from strong feeling or biassed in the opposite direction.

NOTE 16, p. 208.

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Since the text was written we have found a passage in an American authority precisely corroborating the view expressed. William Rawle, a Northerner, of legal eminence, in his work on the Constitution of the United States, is so far from being a Secessionist that he writes thus, page 298 : every respect, therefore, which this great subject presents, we feel the deepest impression of a sacred obligation to preserve the Union of our country; we feel our glory, our safety, and our happiness involved in it." In spite of these strong feelings, he observes, page 297, when referring to the Constitution: "It was foreseen that there would be a natural tendency to increase the number of States with the anticipated increase of population. It was also known, though it was not avowed, that a State might withdraw itself."

NOTE 17, p. 216.

In addition to the various positions we have examined, an able argument of Madison's appears to be relied upon by the supporters of the Union, though it seems to us to be entirely beside the question. He observes: "The Constitution being thus derived from the same source as the constitutions of the States, it has within each State the same authority as the Constitution of that State; and is as much a Constitution, in the strict sense of the term, within its prescribed sphere, as the Constitutions of the States are within their respective spheres; but with this essential difference, that being a compact among the States in their highest sovereign capacity, and constituting the people thereof one people for certain purposes, it cannot be altered or annulled at the will of the States individually, as the Constitution of a State may be at its individual will.” We entirely agree in these views, and in the verdict that the Constitution cannot be "altered or annulled" at the will of one State. But a State that secedes

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does not propose to alter or to annul one word; that State leaves the Constitution intact in the enjoyment of the rest. To alter or annul a law would be to continue parties to a compact and yet dispute its terms. It is strange that these words of Madison should be relied upon by those who also rely upon Webster, when he denies what is here truly asserted, that the Constitution is "a compact among the States, in their highest sovereign capacity." Now if sovereign States enter into a compact which expresses no period of duration, it is clear any one of them may withdraw from it at will. Otherwise, that State would be constrained by some will or force external to itself, and so far would be in subjection to that will of others, and be a subject not a sovereignty. To alter or annul a law would interfere with the rights of others, to withdraw from it is to exercise a right self-contained, and which does not of necessity affect any other party.

NOTE 18, p. 225.

There is on record a correspondence between Madison and Hamilton on which an effort is made to build an argument. When in great doubt whether the New York convention would ratify, Hamilton wrote to ask Madison if it would be possible to permit that State to give a conditional ratification, to which Madison replied in the negative, asserting that the ratification must be absolute. We cannot see that these private letters possess any force, or throw any light upon the subject not already existing. Madison simply stated what is obvious to any one who reads the directions of Congress under which the Constitution was framed. Could a private letter or the reply to it have any force upon the sovereign rights of the State of Georgia, a thousand miles off, and as ignorant of the correspondence at the time as the people of New Zealand? The right of secession can only be deduced from principles inherent in the public instruments to which the States were parties, and can only be denied upon the same grounds. We may add, that although ratification was in all cases absolute, the State of Virginia passed simultaneously an Act declaring the right "to resume" the powers granted, or, in other words, the right to secede.

NOTE 19, p. 233.

An objection has been made to the terms of praise in which we speak of Mr. Curtis's work on the Constitution. To show that those terms are impartial, it suffices to say that this writer is a strong supporter of the Union. Whilst differing entirely from the conclusions at which he would assuredly arrive as to a right of secession, we reaffirm that his work is not only "admirable," but further, that no historical work has appeared upon the Constitution of the Union that can possibly be placed in comparison with it.

NOTE 20, p. 240.

We are indebted to a writer in the Quarterly Review,' January, 1862, for an argument to show that the right of secession is in no respect inconsistent with the Constitution. It is remarked that if a clause were added expressly permitting it, the whole of the existing clauses would stand good as they are. The effect would be that so long as a State continued a member of the Union it would obey its terms, but at once, upon retiring under such permissive clause, every obligation would cease. It need hardly be said that it would have been as unwise to insert such a clause, and so provoke its exercise on the first difference, as it was impossible to insert a clause to the opposite effect for the reasons fully assigned.

NOTE 21, p. 245.

On referring to the Constitution of the Southern States now given, there will be found in the preamble the words: "Each State acting in its sovereign and independent character"-an obvious admission of the right of secession, although that right is not expressly declared, for the reason given in the last note.

During the period which has elapsed since the text was written, several of these expeditions have been despatched, and with just such results as are predicted. That which took Hatterass achieved the conquest of a sand-bank, separated

from the main land by an inland sea, and peopled by a handful of wreckers. The result of the "Great Armada" is the occupation of two or three small islands of diluvial mud, and the command of a supply of cotton which, so far as yet collected, would not feed the northern mills for twelve hours of work. It is quite possible that succeeding expeditions may achieve much more than this, but what can they do towards the subjugation of a country so vast that a space as large as England might be taken from it without being missed on the map?

NOTE 23, p. 284.

General Phelps has since issued a proclamation. The use of the pen seems preferred by most of the generals to that of the sword. So far as it may be understood, it would seem to indicate that the pathway to the freedom of the negro is through a study of the American Constitution. This is no doubt nearer to his reach than the "transcendental" freedom of Mrs. Stowe. The latter, at a first view, seems very distant, but another gentle advocate has gone beyond it. Mr. Ex-minister Fay, after disentangling his mind from some strange associations with Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, ascends beyond the " transcendental," and attains the "apocalyptic." So far, as matter of fact, the negro seems likely to gain little by the Constitution, the transcendental, the apocalyptic, or even the perusal of the seventh chapter of Joshua, which, although read to Congress for his benefit, has no reference to slavery whatever.

NOTE 24, p. 293.

It is difficult to comprehend why any sect should confine its denunciations to one particular evil, to the exclusion of others ever so great. Still more remarkable is it that Mrs. Stowe should be so intensely zealous in the direction of negro slavery, a very fashionable grievance, and yet be incapable of perceiving another form in which slavery exists in the United States, incomparably more repulsive and iniquitous. There is the great territory of Utah, with its governor, and its delegate to Congress, and its Supreme Court, and also, like the South, its "domestic institution."

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There is Mr. Prophet Brigham Young, with his thirty wives, numbered, from number one to number thirty. None assert that slavery has hurt the negro bodily; it has cramped his thoughts, and debased his spirit. And has no slavery cramped the thoughts or debased the spirit has none stung and benumbed the mind with its poison, where white women are found submissive to be stalled and ticketed and numbered? Is there nothing in this to awake our sensibility, or shall all pity for our sisters be forbidden unless their colour be black? If there be a woman's mission in America, if there be any domestic institution which should rightfully stir to its innermost depths the indignant spirit of a woman, surely it is to see her sisters, women of her own race, with long hair, and skin transparent to a blush, enslaved to masters of the same colour, and so debased as to sur render upon such an altar, not the paganism of Africa, but the Christianity of our own people and the civilization of our own age.

NOTE 25, p. 299.

It has been observed, that, admitting all this history, still that it tells as much against the South as the North. Why should it not? It is not the object of this work to make statements or withhold them because they tell for or against either section. Here the argument is that we are under no obligation to the Union, to the conjunction of North and South heretofore existing. This argument would have no force whatever unless the evidence did embrace both parties, for it could not be addressed to a Union if it applied only to one. None but a partisan could think or assert that the South does not fully merit its share of blame in the past history of the United States. We hold that the Union has been injurious to the political principle of both sections of the whole people, and not of a part only.

NOTE 26, p. 307.

By a report of the Secretary to the Treasury, the exports of the United States for the year ending 30th June, 1860, were 373 millions of dollars, of which the products of the South comprised 253, and those of the North 120 millions