THOSE who have followed the discussions in this country on the American contest are aware that the view taken of that event by the most influential organs of the English press has, during the period which has elapsed since its commencement, undergone considerable modification. The first announcement by South Carolina of its intention to secede from the Union was received in this country with simple incredulity. There were no reasons, it was said, for secession. What the constitution and laws of the United States had been on the eve of Mr. Lincoln's election, that they were on its morrow. It was absurd to suppose that one half of a nation should separate from the other because a first magistrate had been elected in the ordinary constitutional course. The agitation for secession was therefore pronounced to be a political feint intended to cover a real movement in some other direction. But when the contest had passed beyond its first stages, when the example set by South Carolina was followed by the principal States of the extreme South with a rapidity and decision shewing evident concert, when the treacherous seizure of Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbour gave further significance to the votes of the conventions, when lastly the attack on Fort Sumpter awoke the North, as one man, to arms, belief in the reality of the movement could no longer be withheld, and speculation was directed to the causes of the catastrophe. The theory at first propounded was nearly to this effect. Commercial and fiscal differences were said to be at the bottom of the movement.