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ingress of free blacks already passed by some of the Western States. That they will not, if emancipated, be allowed the rights of American citizens, either in the Southern or Northern States, seems pretty clear after the tranquil acquiescence of the North in the decision of Chief Justice Taney in the Dred-Scott case. To talk of the simultaneous deportation of 3,000,000 human beings to Africa or Hayti, is simply absurd.

What then would be done? These 3,000,000 men, women, and children are there present on the soil, and when the country is conquered by the North, they will have to be disposed of. Will not Northern capitalists argue with their countrymen, and press upon their Government, flushed with victory and grateful for the support of its adherents, such considerations as the following? You do not know what to do with these slaves. "You must feed them; are they to be fed without labour? There are the broad acres which they formerly cultivated now lying waste; here is the capital to employ them. They will not work except by compulsion, and is not such compulsion the 'best thing for them, the best thing for us, and the best thing. for the country?' But we shall be met by the proclamation of Mr. Lincoln of September 22nd, announcing that in all States which shall not have returned to the Union before the 1st of January, 1863, the slaves are to be free. Is not this a proof that the cause of the North is the cause of freedom?

We cannot say that this step on the part of the Federal Government alters in any way the convictions which we had already formed. The proclamation has, however, great significance, and requires careful consideration.

It sounds to our ears like a cry of despair, and a confession that after all their boasting, it is impossible to subdue the South by the accumulated force of the Northern States. If it means anything, it is a distinct violation of the Constitution, for the maintenance of which the North are fighting; and in the mouth of a Federal President, it amounts almost to a renunciation of constitutional duties.

The spirit of the measure itself is one of vengeance-not of a wish to free the slave. The President does not tell us what is to become of the slaves in any Southern or Border State which resumes its place in Congress before the 1st of January next. We presume that in that State slavery will continue to exist undisturbed. On the negroes themselves the proclamation will, we conceive, produce very little effect; for beyond the range of the Federal cannon it will not easily be promulgated.

Even if the South be conquered, the slaves on the great plantations in the Cotton States may first learn the existence of

the proclamation when they become aware of the fact of its worthlessness. That it is utterly worthless as the basis of future rights to any portion of the coloured population, we have not the slightest doubt. Every Court in the Union which professes to administer the law, now or hereafter, must treat it as a bit of waste paper.

It has in our opinion no greater value in favour of freedom as a moral pledge, than it has as a legal security. It removes no one of the practical difficulties which beset the question of slavery, or which stand in the way of emancipation. It amounts to nothing as a promise, because there is no 'privity' between the person who gives the promise and those who will have to perform it. It is likely enough that any claim made for its fulfilment would be met at the outset by the plea that no one is bound to do that which is impossible; but at any rate it is most improbable that the State Legislatures (with whom emancipation or mitigation of slavery must rest) would hold themselves fettered by the pledge of a Federal officer, relating to matters avowedly beyond his constitutional powers.

Its political effects may, however, be very important. It will divide the supporters of the Federal Government; it will array the Democrats and the Moderate Republicans against the Abolitionists, and, whilst it sows dissension in the North, it will assuredly cause men of the South and probably of the Border States to rally with double energy round their own standard.

It may in this way tend to shorten the war by making it impossible to carry on the Government which has issued it. The President and his advisers possibly hope to embarrass any European Government which may be disposed to recognise the Southern Confederacy, by making such a recognition distasteful to public opinion in England or France. Some effect of this kind the proclamation may certainly produce; but on the other hand it makes it easier for any foreign Power which is inclined to recognise the South, to attach to such an act stipulations and conditions with reference to slavery and the future treatment of the black race. For this reason, and because it may tend to hasten a peace, we rejoice that it has been issued. We certainly disbelieve in its direct operation in favour of emancipation either now or hereafter. We think, as we did before, that when the time comes the difficulty of the 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 negroes would remain just where it was before the proclamation. If the South be subdued the habitual contempt and aversion for the African race will work with unabated force. Men will say that the best and most humane, if not the only practicable way out of all their difficulties, will be the retention of slavery in spite of the promise which the President had no legal power to

give. The disappointment of England would give an additional relish to the adoption of such a course. It would be the converse of the well-known line

'Hoc Ithacus velit, et magno mercentur Atride.'

The New York press would exult in the thought that no British sympathy had been able to save the Southerner, and that the victorious party would now show the world the value which it set on the opinion and the esteem of England with all its hypocritical professions in favour of the negro.

But it will be said that the struggle against the Southern men carried on for so many months (if not years) will leave public opinion in a state utterly incompatible with the toleration of slavery. That it has caused the North to bear the deepest personal hatred against the present slaveholders, we do not doubt; but neither the antecedents of the Union, nor the experience of human nature, make it probable that this hatred would extend to the institution by which those slaveholders have profited, if it can be shown that such institution will be equally profitable to the men who may be ready to employ Northern capital in starting it afresh. The change to the negroes would be only a change of masters.

In spite, therefore, of the proclamation, we are convinced that the chances of mitigating and abolishing slavery in the Southern States will, if those States succeed in establishing themselves as a separate federation, be greater than such chances are if their conquest is effected by the arms of the North. We think it far more likely that the latter will, when the pressure comes, evade the immediate difficulty by retaining slavery, than that a Southern Confederation, necessarily weak and dependent on the public opinion and good-will of foreign states, will continue to insult that opinion and forfeit that good-will, by upholding and defending, as it did whilst it was backed by the power of the Union, the atrocities of slavery and the license of Lynch law.

We do not dispute Mr. Cairnes's forcible statement of the evils of slavery, both moral and economical, although we think that he has somewhat exaggerated the latter, and has somewhat overstated the inherent necessity, which slavery imposes, of seeking fresh soils. We should lament, as much as he would do, the establishment of a new and vigorous slave Power. But, to our eyes, the independence of the South would not be the establishment of a new slave Power. A certain amount of slavery already exists under the Union; and as we believe, it has worked, with far less mitigation from external influences, and with far more activity for social mischief, than it could ever do if it were to set up for itself, with a jealous neighbour

on its northern border, and with all the pressure of European public opinion operating on it from without. This is, we venture to think, the weak point of Mr. Cairnes's book. He himself does not desire the restoration of the Union. He is too clear-sighted not to perceive all the difficulties of the case even on other grounds:

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'But, thirdly, assuming the reconstruction of the Union to be practicable, is it expedient? And here we are met at once by the consideration how is the conquered South to be governed? I can see but one way in which this can be effected by the overthrow of representative institutions in the Southern States, and the substitution of a centralised despotism wielded by the Federal Government. I cannot imagine that there could be any escape from this course; for, granting that in certain districts of the South there might be a considerable element of population favourable to the Union, it is impossible to doubt that in the main the people would be thoroughly disaffected: how are popular institutions to be worked through the agency of a disaffected people? A recourse to despotic expedients would therefore, so far as we can judge, be forced on the North.' (P. 277.)

He then proceeds to comment on what is obvious enough the injurious manner in which these despotic measures must necessarily react on the constitution and government of the North itself; and he goes on most truly to observe, that such a course would imply continued military occupation; for —

The bureauracy would need to be supported by an army, and the army would of necessity be at the disposal of the central Government. The task of holding the South in subjection would thus, as it seems to me, inevitably imperil the cause of popular institutions in North America. Now the loss of popular government would be a heavy price to pay for the subjugation of the South, even though that subjugation involved the overthrow of the slave power.' (P. 279.)

further to bemean whites' Would they with the free

Supposing slavery to be destroyed, are we lieve that the idle and dissolute population of would take at once to steady work for wages? enter into the markets of labour side by side negro, whom they despise and abhor? Would they not, so long as an acre of untilled land remained, roam about as plunderers and squatters, and leave the task of the slave to be performed by those who had been slaves? Mr. Cairnes contemplates, indeed, the possibility of a large immigration of free settlers and capitalists into the Southern States, while he admits that the state of society consequent on such an immigration, and the feuds arising from it, would inevitably create the necessity for an active despotism.

'For these reasons,' he says, 'I cannot think that the North is well

advised in its attempts to reconstruct the Union in its original proportions.' (P. 285.)

But this reconstruction of the Union is the only professed object of the internecine war now carried on with such obstinacy.

Mr. Cairnes does not, therefore, desire that the South should gain its object of independence; and he does not desire that the North should gain its object of reconstruction. He aims at a middle term of his own selection:

'At the same time I am far from thinking that the time for peace has yet arrived. What, it seems to me, the occasion demands, and what I think the moral feeling of Europe should support the North in striving for, is a degree of success which shall compel the South to accept terms of separation, such as the progress of civilisation in America, and the advancement of human interests throughout the world, imperatively require. To determine the exact amount of concession on the part of the South which would satisfy these conditions, is no part of my purpose.' (P. 285.)

That the war will stop at the precise moment necessary for securing Mr. Cairnes's benevolent objects, is a very unlikely thing. We cannot wish success to the North, merely on this speculative principle; we cannot desire to see the Union re-established as a mighty power for maintaining slavery as one of its institutions within, and protecting it against all the nations of the world without. We do not feel sure, that the abolition or even the mitigation of slavery would be the result of the conquest of the South; and we therefore say, without hesitation, that we wish the war to cease, and the independence of the South to be established. We think, on the whole, that the balance of advantages is greatly on this side, so far as our feeble foresight will enable us to penetrate into the obscurity of the future and we know that the continuance of such a war is a great and certain evil.

This brings us to the question of sympathy with the Southern cause, which is naturally imputed to the English as a grievous sin by the citizens of the United States. That such a sympathy exists we must admit; for as Lord Campbell is reported to have said in the House of Lords, on the 4th of August last

It is not too much to say that no class or party in the country any longer desires to see the reconquest of the South and the reconstruction of the Union.'

The reasons already given may go some way towards accounting for this fact, but in reality there appear to us many causes why Englishmen should not wish success to the Northern

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