It should be considered that in Arkansas a great deal of property goes. untaxed that is taxed in other States. Were such included it would make at least one hundred and fifty millions of dollars. Adding the value of the untaxed lands in the State, it would give five hundred dollars to each white inan, woman and child in the State. The total wealth of the northern States, equally divided among all their inhabitants, would be only $233 for each man, woman and child.

The area of the State of Arkansas, exclusive of water, is 52,198 square miles, or 33,406,720 acres. In the old Union, before the admission of Texas, she was the tenth State in point of size. To give some idea of the extent of her territory, we will state that she is larger than England proper, and nearly as large as England and Wales. Ireland could be seated in her lap and leave a margin larger than many European kingdoms.

The county of Jefferson is larger than the State of Rhode Island, and contains twice as much productive land. Arkansas is larger than the State of New York. She has a front of 250 miles on the great Mississippi. Cut up as New England is she would make eight or ten States.

In 1853, the commissioner of the general land office, in his report, published a table showing the disposition of the lands in the several States up to June 30th, 1853. From that we take the following statement of the disposition of lands in Arkansas : Acres sold by U. S. up to June 30, 1853.... Grants for schools and seminaries. Grants for deaf and dumb asylums Grants for internal improvements. Grants for individuals and companies...

Grants for public buildings..
Grants for military services.
Reserved for salines..
Confirmed private claims..
Sold from July, 1853, to July, 1859,

3,425,547 932,540

2,093

500,000

139.000

10,600

1,627,433

46,080

118,451

as reported by commissioner... 3,419,296 Estimated as sold since..

Grant to M. & L. R. railroad.
Swamp lands to date....

Total..

600.000

127,240

7,312,487

.18,261,138

If we deduct this from the area of the State, to wit: 33,406,720 acres, we find that there are 15,145,582 acres of so-called vacant land, which the State acquires by right of eminent domain in seceding or revolutionizing. This, at ten cents an acre, would pay the State debt. With anything like a frugal and wise administration of these lands and the proceeds of their sales, Arkansas will have a fund to pay expenses and enough to grant a home for every soldier who fights for her in this war of independence.

Does this exhibit of the poorest of the Confederate States look so bad for Which northern State the future?

can show as fair a one, in case of permanent separation? Can even any northern man, who is not a fool, see anything in the prospects of that State which does not stimulate her to make still vaster sacrifices for the point at which she aims? It is time that we ccased to feed ourselves with false hopes. The South has convinced the civilized world that she is able to finish her undertaking. If we do not stop fighting, her elevation, and our humiliation, are facts as fixed as fate. If we cannot make reconstruction or restoration agreeable to her interest and her wishes, it is idle to talk about such things. We can never fight her back into an embrace we have given her good cause to hate. It is foolishness on our part to deny that she has the ability both to win and to maintain her independence. Until we abandon this theory of her incompetency, we can take no steps towards the restoration of the Union, so essential to our happiness and prosperity. If we cannot convince the South that

it is essential to her happiness and prosperity, the Union is gone forever. We have lied to ourselves and to the civilized world, until we are laughed at and despised by all the world Are we mad? Are we a nation of fools? We have been answering these questions, to our everlasting shame, for three years. Shall we keep on in this disgraceful course? Never, until we relinquish all right to coerce sovereign and co-equal sister States, shall we begin the work of restoration. That is precisely the point for which those States are contending the right not to be coerced, not to be plundered, not to be murdered, whenever the Federal Government chooses. That point must be settled, and settled against the monstrous claims of the Federal Government, before there can be, or ought to be, any peace. Peace means simply a withdrawal of our invading armies. That, and that alone, is peace. Any other programme for peace is either a delusion or a fraud.

C. CHAUNCY BURR

MR. SEWARD makes history-history and falsehood with the same breath. He says: "History shows that every Republic which has gone down failed for want of sufficient power in the government to coerce into obedience. its unwilling members."

Like most of Mr. Seward's performances, this sentence is high sounding but senseless. History shows the reverse of what he states to be true. It was not the absence of coercive pow er, but the unlawful and despotic exer cise of it, that destroyed nearly all the old Republics. Republics though they were called, they were but little more than popular despotisms, in which the several parts were held together by coercive power, instead of by voluntary principle. Despotism in a Republic is the most terrible of all despotisms, from the fact that there is almost necessarily connected with it an infusion of anarchy, which poisons every stream of power that flows from the government.

All the old Republics had the principle of coercion. Before the time of Alexander, the Grecian States formed a Confederation, and established a general government which they called The Amphyctionic Council. This had authority over all the States of Greece. It consisted of deputies or representatives from all the States, who met at Delphos to regulate the affairs of the Confederation. This Council enforced its decrees by the power of war. At length the Boetians, one of the States of Greece, refused to obey a de

crce of the Amplyctionic Council, in consequence of which a heavy tax was laid upon them. They refused to pay it, and then an act was passed confiscating their whole territory. The confusion and anarchy which followed ended in the final destruction of the Amphyctionic Council itself.

After this unhappy experiment of trying to hold independent States together by the force of arms, there were two Republics formed out of the States of Greece, the general government of one of which was called the "Achan League," and of the other, the "Acolian League." They each had the principle of coercion, and they were perpetually at war, not only against their own States, but against each other. There was no peace between them until they were all finally conquered and reduced to a Roman province. They were then obliged to sit down in peace with each other under the same yoke of despotism. By attempting to coerce each other the freedom of all the States of Greece fell together.

So we see that notwithstanding Mr. Seward's assertion, there was no want of the coercive idea in the old Republics of Greece. There was too much coercion. It was by that they fell, just as we are falling by it to-day.

The same was true of the Germanic Confederation. In Germany there were about three hundred Principalities and Republics. Deputies for each of those met annually in the General Diet to regulate the laws of the Empire. But

the execution of these did not rest upon the voluntary principle. The Empire was divided into ten circles, over each of which a Superintendent was appointed, with the rank of Major-General, whose duty it was to enforce the decrees of the General Diet with a military power.

That federation was simply a military despotism, in which freedom never showed its face, notwithstanding Mr. Seward would have us believe that all its miseries came from a lack of the coercive principle. It is true that the old Dutch Republic did not, in its constitution, admit of coercion, but nevertheless it was abundantly seen and felt in the administration of the government. Coercive power was necessarily attached to the office of their Stadtholder. He appointed the officers of the land and naval forces. He presided not only in the States general but in the States of every province, and was the Commander-in-Chief both of the navy and army. So that the Republic was not much but a military despotism.

In fact the Swiss Confederation is the only one of all the Republics in the Old World which did not contain the coercive principle; and it is the only one of them all which has survived to hold up the proud example of freedom in the bloated face of European despotism at the present day.

In the Convention which formed the Constitution of the United States, the coercive principle had some advocates, and was warmly debated. Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, introduced a resolution to the effect that an unwilling State should be coerced by the army

and navy, but it was voted down by an overwhelming majority. The same idea was afterward presented to the Convention, by Mr. Patterson, of New Jersey, and was again promptly negativéd. It never came up afterwards, and therefore our Constitution does not contain the principle. The Constitution is silent on the subject, except to declare that all powers not delegated to the United States are reserved to the States respectively.

The system of General Government established by our fathers was based upon the voluntary principle, as opposed to the coercive. And this principle worked perfectly for half a century, until a band of fanatics succeeded in completely destroying the fraternal relations of the States.

The same section which broke up these fraternal relations is now einploying the bloody force of coercive despotism to hold the angry elements in an impossible embrace. The employment of coercion is itself a dissolving of the Union. Mr. Lincoln's army is a wedge that is driving the sundered sections apart eternally. When the North relinquishes the right of co ercion, the South has declared her readiness to submit all our difficulties to a Convention of all the States, as provided for in the Constitution. It never will, and it never ought to give up be fore. The safety of all the States demands that this matter should be settled for ever, and settled against the monstrous claims of the Federal Government. If it has this right of Statecoercion, there is no State which may not, some time, be made to feel its bloody hand.

THERE is no undertaking in which so many persons have an ambition to engage, and there is scarcely one which is more abused, than that of stump-speaking. So many fail-perhaps seven in ten. It is a strange ambition for a man to wish to exhibit himself in points where, if he is not utterly senseless, he must know himself to be utterly incompetent. If a man has the slightest physical defect, he will invent all kinds of ingenius devices to hide it, and then, perhaps, exhibit the greatest desire to show off his mental weakness upon the stump. If he ventures into that place, all his defects are sure to present themselves There is no branch of oratory that requires such vast mental resources, and such skill in handling them, as successful stump-speaking. The lawyer, the preacher, the member of Congress, can prepare his speech at leisure, and arrange all his points beforehand. Surrounded by his books, he has a thousand helps and props, of which the stump-speaker is deprived. The stumpspeaker must, for the most part, depend upon ready resources. He never knows when some new point may be sprung upon him by questions from his audience. Not to meet all questions promptly and fairly put, gives such an advantage to the opposite side as to more than overbalance all the good his speech could do.

The object of the stump-speech should be to persuade the audience of the truth and justice of your cause, and to convince them of the bad policy

and wrong views of the opposition. It is to get votes-to change the minds or the opinions of men. It requires the very highest efforts of eloquence; and eloquence demands the loftiest powers of the intellect and the heart. To be truly eloquent, a man must not only have the wisdom and deliberation of a Ulysses, but he must also possess the warmth and fervor, and imagina tion of an Achilles. Not only must the orator be armed with these high qualities, but he must be thrice armed with honesty. Whether right or wrong, he must earnestly believe himself to be right. The less he has to hope, or to fear from his hearers, with regard to his own interests, the more likely he will be to rise to the lofty pitch of eloquence. The man who is all the time thinking about himself can never be eloquent. Plato says: "An orator ought to have the acuteness of logicians, the knowledge of philosophers, the style almost of the poets, the elocution and gesture of the finest actors." Cicero laid the foundations of eloquence in a still greater variety of rare qualifications.

Now, when we consider that to the most perfect success as a stump-speaker a man must possess all these rare excellencies, how contemptible must appear the vast number of mercenarics and noodles, who figure as stumpspeakers!

It is right to confess, however, that so few men possess the great attributes of eloquence, it is unreasonable to demand them for every stump