AN IMPORTANT NOTE.

July 1, 1864. I have just read in the Richmond Sentinel of the 18th of June the "manifesto" of the Confederato Congress, which that paper announces to be from the pen of the IIon. William C. Rives, and that, by joint resolution, is to be sent to "our commissioners abroad, to the end that the same may be laid before foreign governments."

This extraordinary document, coming from so distinguished a source, I think should be given entire, and therefore it is inserted here without mutilation or curtailment.

IIow far its assertions in reference to the origin of tho war can be sustained by undeniable historical facts, each one can determine for himself; my impression is, that they are about as well founded as the predictions made as to the final result which will ere long be made manifest to all the world. Here is the MANIFESTO.

"Manifesto of the Congress of the Confederate States of America relative to the existing war with the United States.

"The Congress of the Confederate States of America, acknowledging their responsibility to the opinion of the civilized world, to the great law of Christian philanthropy, and to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, for the part they have been compelled to bear in the sad spectacle of war and carnage which this continent has, for the last three years, exhibited to the eyes of afflicted humanity, deems the present a fitting occasion to declare the principles, the senti ments, and the purposes by which they have been and are still actuated.

"They have ever deeply deplored the necessity which constrained them to take up arms in defense of their rights and

of the free institutions derived from their ancestors; and there is nothing they more ardently desire than peace, whensoever their enemy, by ceasing from the unhallowed war waged upon them, shall permit them to enjoy in peace the sheltering protection of those hereditary rights and of those cherished institutions. The series of successes with which it has pleased Almighty God, in so signal a manner, to bless our arms on almost every point of our invaded borders since the opening of the present campaign, enables us to profess this desire of peace in the interests of civilization and humanity, without danger of having our motives misinterpreted, or of the declaration being ascribed to any unmanly sentiment, or any distrust of our ability fully to maintain our cause. The repeated and disastrous checks, foreshadowing ultimate discomfiture, which their gigantic army, directed against the capital of the Confederacy, has already met with, are but a continuation of the same Providential successes for us. We do not refer to these successes in any spirit of vain boasting, but in humble acknowledg ment of that Almighty protection which has vouchsafed and granted them.

"The world must now see that eight millions of people, inhabiting so extensive a territory, with such varied resources and such numerous facilities for defense as the benignant bounty of Nature has bestowed upon us, and animated with one spirit to encounter every privation and sacrifice of ease, of health, of property, of life itself, rather than be degraded from the condition of free and independent states into which they were born, can never be conquercd. Will not our adversaries themselves begin to feel that humanity has bled long enough; that tears, and blood, and treasure enough have been expended in a bootless undertaking, covering their own land, no less than ours, with a

pall of mourning, and exposing them far more than ourselves to the catastrophe of financial exhaustion and bankruptcy, not to speak of the loss of their liberties by the despotism engendered in an aggressive warfare upon the liberties of another and kindred people? Will they be willing, by a longer perseverance in a wanton and hopeless contest, to make this continent, which they so long boasted to be the chosen abode of liberty and self-government, of peace and a higher civilization, the theatre of the most causeless and prodigal effusion of blood which the world has ever seen, of a virtual relapse into the barbarism of the ruder. ages, and of the destruction of constitutional freedom by the lawlessness of usurped power?

"These are questions which our adversaries will decide. for themselves. We desire to stand acquitted before the tribunal of the world, as well as in the eyes of omniscient justice, of any responsibility for the origin or prolongation of a war as contrary to the spirit of the age as to the traditions and acknowledged maxims of the political system of America.

"On this continent, whatever opinions may have prevailed elsewhere, it has ever been held and acknowledged by all parties that government, to be lawful, must be founded on the consent of the governed. We were forced to dissolve our federal connection with our former associates by their aggressions on the fundamental principles of our compact of union with them; and in doing so, we exercised a right consecrated in the great charter of American liberty -the right of a free people, when a government proves destructive of the ends for which it was established, to recur to original principles, and to institute new guards for their security. The separate independence of the states, as sovercign and co-equal members of the federal Union, had never

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been surrendered; and the pretension of applying to independent communities so constituted and organized the ordinary rules for coercing and reducing rebellious subjects to obedience, was a solecism in terms as well as an outrage on the principles of public law.

"The war made upon the Confederate States was, therefore, wholly one of aggression. On our side it has been strictly defensive. Born freemen, and the descendants of a gallant ancestry, we had no option but to stand up in defense of our invaded firesides, of our desecrated altars, of our violated liberties and birthright, and of the prescriptive institutions which guard and protect them. We have not interfered, nor do we wish, in any manner whatever, to interfere with the internal peace and prosperity of the states. arrayed in hostility against us, or with the freest development of their destinies in any form of action or line of policy they may think proper to adopt for themselves. All we ask is a like immunity for ourselves, and to be left in the undisturbed enjoyment of those inalienable rights of 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' which our common ancestors declared to be the equal heritage of all the parties to the social compact.

"Let them forbear aggressions upon us, and the war is at an end. If there be questions which require adjustment by negotiation, we have ever been willing, and are still willing to enter into communication with our adversaries in a spirit of peace, of equity, and manly frankness. Strong in the persuasion of the justice of our cause, in the gallant devotion of our citizen soldiers, and of the whole body of our people, and, above all, in the gracious protection of IIeaven, we are not afraid to avow a sincere desire for peace on terms consistent with our honor and the permanent security of our rights, and an earnest aspiration to see the world

once more restored to the beneficent pursuits of industry and of mutual intercourse and exchanges, so essential to its well-being, and which have been so gravely interrupted by the existence of this unnatural war in America.

"But, if our adversaries, or those whom they have placed in authority, deaf to the voice of reason and justice, steeled against the dictates of both prudence and humanity by a presumptuous and delusive confidence in their own numbers, or those of their black and foreign mercenaries, shall determine upon an indefinite prolongation of the contest, upon them bo the responsibility of a decision so ruinous to themselves, and so injurious to the interests and repose of mankind.

"For ourselves we have no fear of the result. The wildest picture ever drawn of a disordered imagination comes short of the extravagance which could dream of the conquest of eight millions of people resolved with ono mind 'to dio freemen rather than live slaves,' and forowarned by the savago and exterminating spirit in which this war has been waged upon them, and by the mad avowals of its patrons and supporters of the worse than Egyptian bondage that awaits them in the event of their subjugation.

"With these declarations of our dispositions, our principles, and our purposes, we commit our cause to the enlightened judgment of the world, to the sober reflection of our adversaries themselves, and to the solemn and righteous arbitrament of IIeaven."

If this most extraordinary document had emanated from any other source in either branch of the Confederato Congress, it would not have attracted my attention, nor would any other notice have been taken of it than of a thousand gasconading, braggadocio speeches delivered in that body,