to contend. Thus, the working white class of the South is shut out from agriculture by the negro, and from manufactures by the North. There is no resting-place for the sole of its foot. The poor white is driven to a life of picking-up, and hanging about. In well-ordered societies, this middle class is the great source from which some pass out into labour, and others more gifted, or more energetic, rise to power. It is the body that feeds and supports life in the extremities. No society can be soundly organized in which the centre between the two extremes is in a state of chronic

debility. To confine industry to a particular channel, and fill that channel with foreign labour, must clearly enforce compulsory idleness throughout a large portion of the community; and that portion, of all others, which it is most essential to the welfare of society to maintain in vigorous health. It is this paralyzed state of the labouring white class in the South that has so impeded its growth, when compared with the progress of the North. There have been other causes, shortly to be considered, but this outweighs them all in its pernicious influence on the community.

In fact, slavery, like other wrongs, reacts on the wrong-doer. Taking the most temperate view of it, stripping away all exaggerations, it remains an evil in an economical sense, an outrage on humanity in a moral one. It is a gross anachronism, a thing of two thousand years agothe brute force of dark ages obtruding into the

midst of the nineteenth century-a remnant of elder dispensations whose harsh spirit was lawin conflict with the genius of Christianity, whose mild spirit is love. No reasoning-no statisticsno profit-no philosophy-can reconcile us to what our instinct repels. After all the arguments have been poured into the ear-there is something in the heart that spurns them. We make no declaration that all men are born equal, but a conviction-innate-irresistible - tells us, with a voice none can stifle, that a man is a man, and not a chattel. Remove from slavery, as it is well to do, all romance and exaggeration-in order that we may deal with it wisely and calmly -it remains a foul blot, from which all must desire to purge the annals of the age.

We have already seen that the territorial extension of slavery is injurious to the material interests of the planter, and that the present struggle is not for the furtherance of slavery, (which was not threatened by the election of Mr. Lincoln,) but for the maintenance of the political position and independence of the South, overwhelmed by the growth of an antagonistic power. Nor is it difficult to offer evidence of this, which bears directly on the present inquiry. The slave-owner anxious for the continuance and safety of his system must desire, beyond all things, a guarantee of his property, the command of enormous force to crush out insurrection, and some means of recovering his slaves when attempting to escape. Now,

all of these he enjoys in the highest degree within the Union. The Constitution of the United States was framed by slave-owners, and is a slaveowning code. The whole might of the Union is at the command of the slave-owner to put down any insurrection. It was even forbidden that the slave-trade should be abolished in less than twenty years from its date. It gives political power to slavery, for in allotting the members of Congress to the population, it counts a slave as three-fifths of a man. It provides also, and is in this respect more cruel than the old Hebrew code, that the slave who has escaped on to the soil of freedom, shall be sent back into his bondage. There was a time when we, too, were slave-owners, but even in those days the soil of Britain was held sacred. It was an asylum of liberty, to which when any man had fled imploringly none should ask the colour of his skin. Slave under our laws-owned by our people-of great value to our tradestill, there was that in the genius of the race that gave a sanctity to the land,-the moment the foot of the slave trod upon the shore, his fetters fell back into the sea. There is no such asylum in the United States. The capital of the Union is a slave-owning city. The Federal Court decrees that slavery is a prison, whose walls are wide as the country. Upon the open seas, the slavetrader has but to wrap the stars and stripes around his traffic, and go unsearched. Nor in all that expanse of the North is there one altar to which

the fugitive can creep for refuge-clinging with the grasp of despair-appealing to that creed which proclaims that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," are the inherent rights of man-but he must be dragged back to his bonds, at the bidding of the Federal Constitution.

A fervent appeal has been made to us to support this Constitution. It has been urged, and in no measured terms, that Englishmen, who condemn slavery, are bound to sympathise with those who encounter the perils of war with the name of freedom on their lips. Can it be true, that this is the Constitution we are to support, in freedom's name? Is this what Mr. Seward calls "an object of human affection ?" Our support might be demanded on the grounds that it held together a large population, and gratified the ambition of those whose thirst is for greatness. Or it might be sought on the ground that it fosters a gigantic trade, and brings large profits to its supporters. But to claim our sympathy in the name of freedom, and in the interests of the slave, this seems a mockery of our reason, based on some great delusion in those who ask it, or attempted in a belief that the darkest ignorance envelops those whom they address.

We see clearly that, looking only to slavery, its maintenance, and protection, the Southerner can desire nothing more than he already has in the Constitution and the Union. What, indeed, is he to gain by such a change as the present one?

Instead of the whole power of the continent to support him, two-thirds will be lost to him-perhaps arrayed against him. In place of the Northern States to prevent, to act as a prison wall to the escape of his slaves, and return them at his bidding, he makes them foreign, and jealous powers. Instead of abolitionism being the doctrine of a small sect, regarded as fanatical by the great majority of the North, he will have it adopted as an article of the general creed. It is difficult to imagine a change more dangerous, more disastrous, to his interests as a slave-owner; for to these permanent effects is added, at once, an enormous depreciation in the value of his property of all descriptions, with the risk of hostile armies shattering the whole system into ruin. Hence, to support the theory that slavery, as a system, has been the cause of existing events, we must suppose its people ignorant of their Constitution, and all its safeguards, and blind to evils and dangers inevitable in the change, and so obvious that he who runs may read them. But the men of the South have been, throughout the history of the United States, the ablest statesmen of the Union, and it cannot be conceived that they could be blind to consequences so manifest. The truth is apparent, that so far as slavery is concerned, the South has every possible reason for remaining in the Union, and that they have acted in direct opposition to that interest, under the influence of other and more powerful considerations.