rogues? and yet, God in His all-wise providence may overrule their quarrel to bring to light the dishonest gains which they have filched, make them disgorge their plunder, secure their appropriation to persons to whom they belong, and subject the criminals to the punishment justly due to their crimes. When our terrible war commenced in America, our government, churches, and overwhelming masses amongst the people, had given themselves up to a wilful perversion of the truths of Christianity, a false commercial policy, and an overshadowing attachment to, and superstitious veneration for the Union; consequently, they had trampled down under their black hoofs all those sacred principles which hold in their everlasting embrace the supreme rights of men, irrespective of kith or kin, caste or colour, country or clime, so amply and brightly developed in the New Testament, Declaration of Independence; and even in the Constitution of the disunited states; thus robbing both God and man. But why this stretch of despotic power? God had made the negro with a darker hue on his countenance; and as negro slavery was first connived at, and afterwards openly avowed to be the cornerstone of the Federal Republic, in order to maintain the union one and inseparable, the Bible was made to rob the negro of his manhood-the eagles of freedom were smuggled out of the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence was resolved into a glittering generality for the exclusive use and benefit of the white or superior race, so-called; this vast and

foul conspiracy, therefore, was not something new, or novel, or startling with us. It commenced with our revolutionary fathers, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington, and culminated in the reign of terror inaugurated by our lilliputian race of political men, represented by President Lincoln, and Senator Sumner, who subscribed their oaths to the Constitution as a slave document, and then tried to palm themselves off for hero philanthropists; and also by our clerical agitators, such as "Parson Brownlow," the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Drs. Cheever, Eddy, Tyng, Dowling, etc., etc., who have confederated to prove their principles orthodox by sending bomb shells and bullets, "swamp angels " and bayonets into the South, for its conversion, and the restoration of the union.

When, therefore, we begun to live, we begun to die to all sense of decency and shame; and as we commenced, even so we have come to grief in consequence of our national jugglery and fraud.

The immediate cause of our present troubles was a quarrel for the division of the spoils, both in regard to the "Cranberry Jam" of the government, and the territory taken from the Indians. The unfolding scenes connected with it have revealed the character of our infamy and guilt as a people. The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher says, that "God is the great tax-gatherer who is abroad making the people disgorge their plunder;" but be this as it may, defeat, disunion, loss of personal liberty, and the terrible destruction of life and property, demonstrate beyond cavil that the

Almighty is "abroad" with the great whip of retribution to fetch up arrears on the tender skins of our Northern people as well as the Southerns, for their double-dyed garments of shame, dishonour, and guilt; neither can we doubt that the negro will come out from under the avalanche of wickedness which both North and South have helped to create, claiming the lawful use of the two hands which God has given him, and maintaining that it is not insurrection to take his own limbs into his own keeping, or to walk off with them; neither will the free negro be so generally proscribed or ostracised in connexion, with the common industries of life, the pathway of social intercourse, the halls of science and literature; common councils, legislature, congress, or the church of the living God. Thus God will bring good out of evil; and if any man inquires why could not we have had this good without the famine, sword, and pestilence? It is because, as the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in his Harper's Ferry Sermon has said, "there was a remarkable pertinence which these things have, described in Jeremiah vi. 12-19; in many respects to our nation in the past, and to our times in the present." O! ponder over these words of terrible import. "For I will stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of the land saith the Lord; for from the least of them even unto the greatest of them, every one is given to covetousness, and from the prophet even unto the priest, every one dealeth falsely. They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying peace, peace, when there is no peace.

Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush; therefore they shall fall among them that fall; "at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said we will not walk therein. Also, I set watchmen over you, saying, hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said we will not hearken. Therefore, hear ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them. Hear, O earth, behold I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened to my words, nor to my law, but rejected it." These words are now being fearfully illustrated and realized by our American people as a nation, in the way of God's terrible judgments; and whilst God inflicts the punishment He has no copartners in this work, not even "most valued and benevolent fellow-townsmen, although they may claim with humble thankfulness, in being able and privileged to give some help." And there can be no "atonement or consolation," as Mr. Cobden avows there is, in his recent letter to Simeon Whiteley; "for the horrors with which our American war has been accompanied," not even when it can be shewn that as the result of this war four millions of human beings have been "elevated from the condition of chattels to the rank of free men," since the "good ends of Provi

dence" in their deliverance have always been within the compass, range, or mighty sweep of our Northern people, without the use of violence and blood. "It may seem strange for me to say," Ward Beecher declares in the sermon already referred to, "that the lever with which to lift the load off Georgia is in New York, but it is so." Why has not the proper lever been applied? Has not the primary cause of our awful calamities been revealed? Did not good old Timothy Dwight thunder in the ears of our people repentance for national sins? Did not Dr. Hopkins cry, "Hearken to the sound of the trumpet;" but the people said, "we will not hearken." Others reiterated the same cry, and were driven from their pulpits, all conventional relationships, and from their property and homes into exile.

"Where lying lips do torture,
Their mercy into crime,
And the slanderer does flourish
As the bay tree for a time."

At length two special messengers appeared to warn the people of their sins, in the persons of Elijah Lovejoy and John Brown, who gathered up their strength and lives, and threw them against the wickedness of the land; but our people had become so hardened in crime, under the instructions received from teachers who covered up malum in se with their theology and technicalities: hence the cry forthwith arose that these men are insane, let us kill them; and, accord