Those early explorers were the Jesuit missionaries of France. They were the first pathfinders of our empire; they first carried the torch of Christianity and science into those unexplored regions.

Two centuries have gone by; but their monuments still remain. They can be traced from Arcadia to St. Anthony's Falls. The magic shores of Champlain and Lake George still hold the echoes of the shouts of the chivalry of France. They planted the fleur de lis, and it grows there still. The names of Montcalm and Champlain still ring among those mountains; and among the few stricken descendants of Indian tribes who still haunt those neighborhoods these names are household words.

The French left their language among the children of the forest, and it is preserved. The Iroquois still remember with tenderness and love the souvenirs left them by the humanity, the science, the genius and superb manners of the Jesuit fathers and the brave cavaliers of the age of Louis XIV.

Sailing up the other great continental river from the Gulf of Mexico, the French explorers reached the westernmost point their St. Lawrence brothers had made, till they met and held council on one of those anticlinal ridges where, if a drop of water be spilt on a sharp edge, half of it finds its way to the ocean through the St. Lawrence, the other goes to mingle with the warm Gulf Stream.

And so everywhere we follow the path of these explorers we find evidences of the efforts of the French to introduce civilization. They founded cities; they established missions; they explored regions utterly unknown; and they left in their writings imperishable monuments to their fame.

France came to America to give light, knowledge, science, religion, liberty. For no other purpose did she ever set foot on this continent.

England never came but for robbery, conquest, or to establish negro slavery. She never tried to civilize the American

Indian. She never helped establish a colony on this continent, unless it may have been to reward a court favorite with a monopoly or to make sinecures for her nobility.

New England owes her no thanks; for it was settled by the Puritans, after she had hunted them out of her kingdom like wild beasts. Miles Standish, Roger Williams, Lord Baltimore, William Penn, Oglethorpe :-what did the British Government ever do for any of these men, or their colonies?

True, England was ready enough to claim such colonies as her property, and such colonists as her subjects, as soon as they were important enough to tempt her cupidity. But what help did the British Government ever give these colonies? It was claimed in the House of Commons, during the debate on the Stamp Act, that we had been planted by its care and nurtured by its protection. "Planted by your care?” exclaimed the indignant Colonel Barré. "No! your oppressions planted them in America. Nourished by your indulgence? They grew up by your neglect."

But, leaving all those old wrongs in oblivion, and forgetting even the insults which followed them in later years, a new generation had come up, prepared to look with friendly eyes on what was once called in America our fatherland. The two nations seemed to be coming together and clasping hands in a lasting alliance. A cable was laid on the floor of the ocean that rolled between us; and once, at least, it sent a message of amity, and it was heartily responded to. Here the amity seemed to end. The cable could go no further. Was it ominous? It seems up-hill work to lay another, particularly with both termini on British soil! Yes! to flash by submarine lightning new aid and comfort to the murderers of our republic, advising them that a new steam war-pirate for their service has just passed the grain-ship Griswold in the Mersey, the one to destroy the commerce and the lives of loyal American citizens, the other freighted with bread to save the lives of the starving operatives of Lancashire!

Most English statesmen seem to be laboring just now under a strange infatuation. They appear to forget from what sources this nation sprung, and the elements of strength and endurance we have aggregated in our progress; that we are not one people, but all peoples, since all have mingled to aggregate one republic; that these new combinations have resulted in a new form of national existence; that none of us propose to surrender this system of political life; that any other system must, at least for a long time to come, be an impossibility here; and that it is the fixed and unalterable determination of the great body of the American people to maintain their institutions forever.

If in taking this course we are to encounter the opposition of other nations, we are prepared to do it. We have done nothing to provoke it, as far as we know, nor is it likely that we shall. We wish to avoid it, if we can. But it would be going too far to say that we would purchase immunity from foreign intervention at any price whatever.

XII.

The Issue as the South made it :-Independence or
Subjugation.

FROM the first hour of this Rebellion, its leaders have declared that there was only one issue to be tried :-Independence or Subjugation. They have never admitted the possibility of the suppression of the revolt through the triumph of the national arms. The overthrow and capture of their armiesthe very worst thing they thought could ever happen-we supposed would end the struggle. They thought differently; and they still declare that they adhere to the ground they first took :-if they fail in achieving their separation and independence, they expect nothing but extermination.

Therefore they must prepare for it, for it will come: they have pretty nearly ruined themselves already; we can finish the work. If there must be a final sacrifice, it will not be the Union.

They have held up their subjugation as a bugbear to excite the sympathy or horror of the world,-like an arrested felon who declares that, if the officers of justice do not let him go, he will take his own life: as though anybody cared how soon he did it. It is a matter of no sort of consequence to mankind, how quick traitors die; but it is of some importance that, like Judas Iscariot, they should make way with themselves, and thus save honest people the expense of their conviction and hanging.

No! the world in 1863 can richly afford to dispense with the further services in the cause of humanity of all men and all communities whose sole business consists in sustaining

slavery and the slave-trade, or any other man-degrading and Heaven-insulting system of iniquity. The death of tyrants is the resurrection of Freedom.

If the truth were all told, it is now plain enough that during the first year of the war we carried it on with a fatal degree of humanity. Mr. Lincoln had said, "Nobody is hurt;" and it seemed likely, under that system, that nobody would be, except two or three hundred thousand of our youthful soldiers. They have left their bones to bleach on the fields of their valor, or they have been carried out dead from the hospitals, or they have gone home with broken-down constitutions or crippled for life.

The most stringent orders were given not to interfere with slavery or the slaves under any circumstances; not to destroy rebel property, but to protect it: and many a soldier has been shot down by the rebels while he was protecting the property of armed insurgents. Things had gone so far that slaves who passed our lines were ordered to be sent back; they could not be employed even in the most menial offices of the camp; while the idea of drafting them into the army sent a chill of horror through the veins of all "conservative men." Generals who attempted it, or proclaimed the slaves of all rebels in conquered territory free, were either severely reprimanded or relieved of their commands.

The idea of prosecuting a war with any great success on this system would have been simply ridiculous, had it not been suicidal. Tens of thousands of our best troops were kept up to their waists at work in water and mud, under a tropical sun, with gangs of negroes eating army rations and looking on the brutal immolation of the army itself.

The first blow levelled at this silly, shilly-shally way of waging an aggressive war, came from the sturdy hand of that earnest, clear-headed man, General Benjamin Franklin Butler. On the 25th of May, some fugitives from Hampton made their way to Fortress Monroe, and under a flag of truce-the