making the Ohio river, and Mason and Dixon's line, the boundary line, he knew as soon as that was done, slavery was done in Kentucky, Maryland, and a large portion of Virginia, and it would extend to all the States south of this line. The dissolution of the Union was the dissolution of slavery. It had been the common practice for Southern men to get up on this floor and say, 'Touch this subject, and we will dissolve this Union as a remedy.' Their remedy was the destruction of the thing they wished to save, and any sensible man could see it. If the Union were dissolved into two parts, the slave would cross the line, and turn round and curse his master from the other shore."

This declaration of Mr Underwood as to the dependence of the slave-masters on the citizens of the free states, to guard their plantations and secure them against desertion, is substantially confirmed by Thomas D. Arnold of Tenessee, who in a speech on the same subject, assures us that the people of the South were dependent on the North for personal protection against their slaves. In assigning his reasons for adhering to the Union, Mr Arnold made use of the following language:

"The Free States had a majority of forty-four in that house. Under the new census they would have fifty-three. The cause of the slaveholding states was getting weaker and weaker, and what were they do? He would ask his Southern friends what the South had to rely on if the Union were dissolved? Suppose

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the dissolution could be peaceably effected (if it did not involve a contradiction in terms) what had the South to depend upon? All the crowned heads were against her. A million of slaves were ready to rise and strike for freedom at the first tap of the drum. If they were cut loose from their friends at the North, (friends that ought to be, and without them the South had no friends) whither were they to look for protection? How were they to sustain an assault from England or France with that cancer at their vitals? The more the South reflected, the more clearly must she see that she has a deep and vital interest in maintaining the Union."

Mr Thompson commenting on the above remarks said: "These unimpeachable testimonies may be accepted, I think, as a sufficient answer to the unsupported assertion of Mr Douglas, that the dissolution of the Union would be just what the slaveholders would like," and they may be also accepted as a standing reproach to himself and others who are now constantly making the avowals of President Davis, vicePresident Stephens, Dr Palmer, Dr Thornwell, Senator Brown, and the Hon. Robert Toombs, a stalkinghorse, "to draw tighter the cords of the Union."

What was impracticable on the part of slaveholders, according to the testimonies produced by Mr Thompson in 1860, must be so now. If the Southerns are fighting to preserve Slavery, what madness it must be on their part to fight for what they cannot retain, or preserve without the aid of the North, and

the Northerns must be equally foolish in shedding such rivers of blood, and producing such wide-spread misery and woe to attain an object which was already within their power to realise without the firing of a single shot, or the destruction of a single life!

Next comes Henry Vincent, Esq., with his lofty assumption that the present conflict between the North and South in America is a "Great Rebellion." Hear what the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in his Harper's Ferry Sermon says: "These sovereign States are united to us not by any federal ligaments, but by vital interests, by a common national life. And the question of duty is not simply what is duty towards the blacks, not what is duty towards the whites, but what is duty to each and to both united I am bound by the great law of love to consider my duties towards the slave, and I am bound by the great law of love also, to consider my duties towards the white man, who is his master. Both are to be treated with Christian wisdom and forbearance. We must seek to benefit the slave as much as the white man, and the white man as really as the slave. We must keep in mind the interest of every part-of the slaves themselves, of the white population, and of the whole brotherhood of States federated into national life." Mr Vincent will hardly dispute the above authority, since he has espoused the cause of Mr. Beecher's partisans; we entreat the reader therefore, to mark the stress which Mr Beecher lays on the sovereignty of the different States-on vital interests

as being the bond of Union, and not federal ligaments -on the different States as constituting a brotherhood; that these vital interests have federated the whole brotherhood of States into national life; that this federation and brotherhood bring obligations to seek the mutual benefit of the slave and the white man his master; and that the recognition of those obligations are to be associated with Christian wisdom and forbearance.

Now if these vital interests are to be the forge to produce the links in the chain that is to bind the States together in the federation or brotherhood of the Union, may, not vital interests also be a forge to produce a sledge hammer to dissever the links in this chain of federation, and destroy the brotherhood of the Union? And who are to be the judge but the administrators and people of what Mr. Beecher calls "These sovereign States."

But should Mr. Vincent repudiate these "vital interests," and fall back on federal ligaments as the bond of Union, which Mr. Beecher says do not exist, and deny the right of any of the States to secede, we would remind him of the broad emphasis Mr. Beecher has laid on these sovereign States. If the powers vested in sovereignty are sacred and supreme, so it is with the States, or they could not with any degree of propriety be called "sovereign States." And should Mr. Vincent repudiate not only vitality of interest as the bond of Union, but the sovereignty of the States, and fall back on the parchments or

written bonds, we would remind him that these are worthless where there is no vitality of interest, and also very insecure when their binding power is dependent on sovereigns, as shewn in the German and Danish war. And there is not a clause in the written bond of the constitution, which our whole brotherhood of States have not trampled under their black hoofs at every period of our history as a people; and Mr. Vincent would hardly allege that law-breakers can put in a plea in favour of constitutional law and order.

But should Mr. Vincent fall back still on the vox populi, we would remind him that the people who live in the slave States, whom Professor Newman calls "Thugs," have the same right as the Poles, Hungarians, Italians, or any other people, to "change their rulers, government, their whole political condition." "This," says the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, "belongs to all men on the face of the globe, without regard to complexion. This right is not either granted or limited in the New Testament. It is left as is air, water, and existence, itself, as things not requiring command or legislation." How foolish to call the American war a rebellion. We can conceive how the whole brotherhood of States have rebelled against God, and are justly suffering the penalty due to their terrible crimes. In this sense it may be called a "great rebellion." But we cannot see how it can be called a rebellion towards man, when our written parchments, such as the constitution and