How plain

the facts we have passed in review! for whom the picture was intended! And those earnest men, in this country, who, from a remote distance, admire, or profess to admire, American institutions, do they believe themselves more competent to judge of them,-better versed in their details, more accurately informed of their results,―than such men as Justice Story, or Chancellor Kent, the most profound of American minds, whose eloquent words are addressed to reason, not to passion, and whose prophetic wisdom is verified before us this day? We have seen the "wise banished from the councils,"-we have witnessed the reverence for power in its " summary movements," we have recognised those "who flatter the people in order to betray them,” -and we have now before us the fall of the Re-* public, even as they predicted that this would be the sure result.

We have seen that the Constitution of the United States is not democratic, that it entirely discards the most essential features of democracy, and that its cardinal principle is moderation. This, the politicians of the Union have spurned, and the main influence that now pervades all American affairs is that directly opposed to it, that of all the most baneful in politics-excess. An American, of great experience and judgment, expressed once, in our hearing, a fervent hope that this country would never follow the example. We have now before us, and that legibly,—in handwriting upon the wall,-the results of this principle of excess,

of liberty swollen into unbounded licence,-of personal independence exaggerated into worship of self, of power extended to number instead of abiding with intelligence, and we witness the result of placing in the government of empires the extravagance of theorists, and the excitement of declaimers, instead of the calm and measured judgment of experienced men.

In this country the working classes have many excellent qualities-industry, natural generosity, a love of fair play, a manly spirit. Yet, we know what manner of political institutions they frame for themselves when they have the power. Let any one study the physiology of a strike—the artful cunning of the demagogue that dupes the victimsthe tyranny they seek to exercise over the minority who desire to work-the ignorance of the true laws of political economy-the lurking desire to supplement inclination with force. To place

power in their hands if they desire it is to place a knife in the hands of a child. Undoubtedly, the end of government is happiness. Would they, or their wives, or their children, be likely to command more real happiness if the affairs of the empire were guided on the political principles by which they attempt to regulate their own? First, give them intelligence that they may know how to employ that power wisely-then rejoice to see it in their possession. Before that, it would be a gift to none more disastrous than themselves. In America, it is true that the populace have a far wider intelligence, they have much more clever

ness, they are possessed of what we see one of their writers has termed "a preternatural sharpness." But underneath all this there is probably no more real wisdom, no greater amount of sound judgment. It is rather the precocity of the child than the wisdom of the man. And if we reflect upon the principles developed in a strike, we shall trace lineaments of the same portrait in American politics; we shall find indeed a very striking resemblance. There is the same influence of "sycophants," the same impatience of opposite opinion, the same contempt of economic laws, the same lurking desire to resort to the persuasion of force.10

We conclude that these institutions, though they retain the form, have no longer the spirit of those designed by the fathers of the country. They no longer "insure justice," secure "domestic tranquillity," or really further the "pursuit of happiness. The Union, a necessity when it was formed, has long ceased to be necessary. For very many years, it has indeed stimulated the rate of progress, but underneath that superficial prosperity has been working out that "degeneracy" and "demoralization" upon which we have read the testimony of the most eminent American authorities. If these are its results, showing that, whilst promoting the lower, it has debilitated all the nobler attributes of national life, we cannot but conclude that it has entirely ceased to conduce to the wellbeing of the nation.

10 See Notes in Appendix.

G

It may be thought that we have criticised these defects with an extreme severity. But the terms we have used are temperate beside those of the American authorities quoted, and if severity there be, it extends only to the evil, never to the man. The events occurring and the interests at stake are too grave for honied words. Our language is plainspoken; timidity, subserviency, sycophancy, are words foreign to our native tongue. Whoever believes in the existence of such evils as we have described will write with no friendly, but with a perfidious pen if he attempt to gloss them over.

What desire, indeed, has anyone here except to see that great country the home of a really great people? No fortune that can betide will sever the link of relationship to ourselves. Few feelings lie deeper in the human breast than love of kindred. None desire to be quite alone in the world. Though less perceptible than in men or families, its influence extends to nations. They who assume the existence on our part of a covert ill-will towards America reverse the real impulse. Did that spirit really exist, it would prompt rather to conceal than to expose insidious dangers. It is because we desire to see them kinsmen whom we can respectto hold them not merely as related by descent, but in the warmer relationship of manly esteem-these feelings prompt us to deplore the evils that sunder us from each other, and to denounce the causes that are widening the gulf between us year by

year.

CHAPTER III.

CAUSES OF THE DISRUPTION OF THE UNION.-BALANCE OF POWER.

HAVING examined what the Union has really become, and to what extent its political institutions have tended to increase all those original elements of dissolution which exist in federal governments, we proceed to consider the immediate causes of its disruption. They may be classed, and will be most clearly examined, under three heads:

First. A political cause; the reversal of the balance of power, by the immigration into the Northern States.

Secondly. Embittered feeling; existing originally, but aggravated by the continued agitation of Northern Abolitionists.

Thirdly. Endangered interests; exposed now to the action of the Protectionist party, on their accession to permanent power.

No one will presume to assign the exact proportions in which these causes have combined to produce the present convulsion. Each of thera has had greater weight than either of the others,