citizens of any State to see its political importance gradually declining. When it results from natural and inevitable causes, it will still be fraught with regret. But when a State is steadily increasing in population, to find that, notwithstanding this, its political power is decaying, both relatively and absolutely,-this cannot fail to stir up some impatience in the spirit of a proud people. There will appear an insidious principle in laws that produce such an effect. No construction of clauses, nor views of general convenience, will alter the unsatisfactory character of the thing itself. It may be argued that the alteration of the standard or ratio of numbers to each member, has been absolutely necessary to prevent overcrowding the House of Representatives. It will be said, too, that the rule applies equally to all the States. Theoretically this is true, but not so in practical effect. To reduce 100 to 50 is abstractedly the same as to reduce 2 to 1; but in practice the contest of 50 with 100 is possible, whilst that of 1 with 2 is hopeless. The effect of this practice is strongly adverse to the smaller number, or, in other words, it tends to aggravate the effect of the superior numbers of the North. It will be obvious that it only requires to push the principle to extremes to reduce the representation of a small State to a single member, although that State may have been originally important, and may have increased slowly, yet steadily in population. Theoretical arguments will have but little

effect in averting the discomfort of the losing side.

It is not indeed in human nature to watch such a process without doubting whether laws are really working to equal advantage when their effects are felt to be so unequal. Nor is it in human nature to have once been in possession of power, and permit it to pass into rival hands, without a struggle. And in some of the oldest and most important of the Southern States this spectacle of the decay of political power is rendered far more depressing when a similar decline is apparent in many other directions. Senator Benton, a strong supporter of the Union, after stating the extent to which the Southern import trade had fallen off, continues thus: "This is what the dry and naked figures show. To the memory and imagination it is worse; for it is a tradition of the Colonies that the South had been the seat of wealth and happiness, of power and opulence; that a rich population covered the land, dispensing a baronial hospitality, and diffusing the felicity which themselves enjoyed; that all was life, and joy, and affluence then. And this tradition was not without similitude to the reality, as this writer can testify; for he was old enough to have seen (after the Revolution) the still surviving state of Southern Colonial manners, when no traveller was allowed to go to a tavern, but was handed over from family to family through entire States; when holidays were days of festivity and expectation long prepared for, and

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celebrated by master and slave with music and feasting, and great concourse of friends and relations; when gold was kept in chests, after the downfall of Continental paper, and weighed in scales, and lent to neighbours for short terms without note, interest, witness, or security; and when petty litigation was at so low an ebb that it required a fine of forty pounds of tobacco to make a man serve as constable. The reverse of all this was now seen and felt-not to the whole extent which fancy or policy painted, but to extent enough to constitute a reverse, and to make a contrast, and to excite the regrets which the memory of past joys never fails to awaken.”

It is true that this picture will in no degree apply to those of the Southern States which have come into being since the Union. But it applies to a sufficient number to supply the leaders of a movement. Upon the leaders all such movements depend, and their feelings will not be unaffected by such facts as these. It is true that slavery is really the main cause, and the working of the Union a lesser one; but when there are two causes of such facts, of which men will not see or know not how to change the one, they will assuredly desire to try the effect of changing the other. The reasoning may be wrong, but the fact is there, and we cannot but see in it a reasonable ground for doubt on the part of a Virginian whether the Union has, in his own case, promoted that "pursuit of happiness" which, in

America, it is an avowed object of Government to

secure.

We have considered the disturbing political effect of immigration to the exclusive gain of the North. But its effect on existing States is small when compared with its importance in respect of the admission of new States into the Union. At the commencement of the present century, the purchase of Louisiana from France, and the abstraction of Florida from Spain, gave a vast accession of territory to the South, and appeared to dispel for ever the prospect of its supremacy being disputed. The attempt, indeed, on the part of the North was long abandoned. But the rate of immigration into the Free States grew more rapid. The onward progress of the Lake States became truly marvellous; and in 1820, when Missouri applied for admission, the relative numbers in the Senate were so evenly balanced, that it came to be decisive of the continuance of political power in the South, whether that State should be an addition to its own ranks, or to those of the adversary. It was this which caused the desperate character of that struggle. The mere admission of a single State had been accepted with indifference before, when regarded merely as the addition of one to a number, but it had become the weight that was to turn the scale. Previously, each one neutralized but one; in this case it might neutralize the whole by its casting vote. As a question of Slave extension, Missouri was of no great interest, being too

far North for the advantageous employment of Slaves. There was abundance of better soil in the South untouched. But as affecting the balance of power, the importance of the Missouri question

was supreme.

It is hardly necessary to state that the contest ended in favour of the South by the admission of Missouri as a Slave State, accompanied by the well-known compromise, under the provisions of which slavery was to be excluded from all the territory embraced in the Louisiana purchase, north of 36° 30′ latitude. For a time this restored peace, or rather it was followed by a truce.

The original compromises on which, as we have seen, the Constitution was framed, have been followed by this and others in its working. But all such compromises, when they relate to questions of right or wrong, must involve on one side at least an abandonment of principle, and leave resentment behind. They are also evidence that the States which are strong enough to enforce them, are strong enough to break them if so disposed; and the disposition is not likely to be long absent where such antagonism exists. It is the great

misfortune of America, that the thirteen colonies were ever combined into one incongruous whole. But the impression prevailed in those days that Slavery would gradually die out. Had the able statesmen of that time anticipated the existing condition of affairs, they would not have attempted to tie together interests of such magnitude and so