parties, does not leave behind it animosities that cannot be reconciled, more especially if it leaves common interests to be secured. It cannot be expected, indeed, that the Cotton States, should they be restored to the Union, would consent to any plan of emancipation, however moderate, but there is ground for hope, that if one were proposed, not as a trophy of victory, not revengeful nor oppressive, they would not resist it by another war.

Should some such plan as that suggested be adopted, it would be a signal and glorious triumph of reason, of humanity and of free government. With slavery withdrawn from our politics, which it can never be unless withdrawn from our Constitution, with a real Union founded on the basis of truth and justice, what limits could be assigned to the power, the grandeur, the happiness of this republican empire of the Saxon race!

This war is growing into formidable dimensions. The two billlions make a desperate fight. But truth, humanity and the world's opinion are arrayed against them, and these are stronger than cotton. The two billions cannot muster armies enough to defend a lie. The Gods have not abdicated their heavenly thrones. Either violently in the midst of the war, or peacefully as a consequence of the war, the untruth in our Constitution is doomed to perish. This war is the deathstruggle of slavery. It may prove the birth-struggle of a new Union.

CHAPTER V.

DEMOCRACY.

IN our day, the word democracy is generally understood to mean a representative Government, elected by equal and universal suffrage, and it is usual to call ours a Democracy. Whatever, by reason of inherent tendencies, it may have in effect become, there is no democracy in the Constitution. It says not a word about universal suffrage, but on the contrary, expressly provides against its application to any department of the Government, except one branch of the Legislature, and to that it does not enjoin, but permits its application. The President according to the Constitution is to be chosen, not by a vote of the people, but by an Electoral College, which shall be appointed "by each State, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." The Judiciary is appointed by the President and Senate, and the Judges hold their offices during good behavior. The people have no control over them whatever. The Senate is chosen by the Legislatures of the States, and represents the States, not the people. The choice of the House of Representatives alone is by the Constitution referred to the people, and it provides that those who vote for it "shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislatures.'

When the Constitution was made, these qualifications varied in the different States. In many of them a certain amount of property was necessary to entitle a man to vote, and this last vestige of conservatism may, perhaps, exist in some of them now. Such a condition, or any other, may be imposed on the right of suffrage hereafter at the pleasure of the States; and should the Union be restored, the Southern States will very probably exercise this privilege, so that the Government may

be subjected to democratic influences from one part of the country, and to aristocratic or oligarchic from another. This, indeed, has already happened, and with most pernicious results. The Southern States, more especially the Cotton States, are really aristocracies and oligarchies, with all the evil and few of the good features of such forms of government. The governing class is not a nobility, with the superior culture and sentiment that accompany high birth. It is not founded on hereditary landed property, the essential element of an aristocracy, connecting it with the past and with the future, creating permanent wealth, independence of character, freedom of thought, local attachments and the love of stability and social order.

Being without the law or custom of primogeniture, estates are divided by each generation, and old families decay, but retain their pride and aversion to active industry and useful pursuits. The distinguishing feature of Southern aristocracy, however, is not land, inherited or purchased, but negro slaves, either inherited or purchased; and its connection with these is not the humane relation of the old baron to his vassals, or of the modern English lord to his tenantry and peasantry, or even of the Russian noble to his serfs, who have personal rights and a vested interest in the soil The high moral influences of entire or qualified freedom of the inferior classes, and the sympathies created by a common country, and government and race, are controlling and beneficial elements in all these cases. The dependents of the Southern planter are slaves; they are of an inferior race, separated from his own by wide gulfs of disparity; they are not his countrymen; the law does not even class them as men; they have no country, no government, no laws, no rights; they are property, and wholly subjected to his arbitrary power. Because slavery and the negro have prevented the growth of manufactures, commerce, the mechanic arts and educated industry, earning comfort and commanding respect, and have thus thrown all wealth into the hands of the planters, they practically control the politics of the South. Practically, because there is no class to oppose them, but not legally. Theoretically, they are the fellow-citi

zens of the " poor whites," who seem to be regarded as a caste lower even than the slave. Any one can be a planter, however vulgar, coarse and ignorant, who has money to buy land and

negroes.

This practical aristocracy, therefore, is subjected to no influences to secure high qualifications for the responsible duties of government; and as it has no legal rights as a governing body, it has no legal duties, and therefore no responsibility. For these reasons, its sole rule of action is likely to be its own exclusive interest. Such a Government wants the aristocratic element, is a mere oligarchy, controlled by narrow views and sordid motives, and is incapable of liberal desires for the improvement of society or of the spirit of nationality. It will almost of necessity sacrifice all other classes to its own, and the whole country to its own section. To speak, therefore, of the Southern slaveholders as an aristocracy in the European sense, implying hereditary wealth, refinement, high culture, legal position, political power and duty, coupled with responsibility, love of country and interest in its general prosperity, or as a bright conservative land of traditions and manners, connecting the past with the future, is a manifest absurdity. There is no resemblance between them and any past or present aristocracy of Europe, except that they, of necessity, possess most of the vices and evil tendencies attributed to the

worst.

It is not intended here to disparage the character of the Southern slaveholders, but to speak of their necessary qualities as a governing class. A Southern gentleman, a Southern lady, warm-hearted, impulsive, high-spirited and refined have been always appreciated and welcomed in the North. To their influence, indeed, much of the power of slavery over Northern opinion may be attributed. Noble traits of heart and mind, elegance and grace, are of a nature to have spectators, and thus win and conquer wherever they appear. But a reputation lingers sometimes after the substance out of which it grew has disappeared. There are not so many Southern gentlemen and Southern ladies now as formerly. Half a century or more ago, the Southern planters in their tastes, habits, sentiments

and manners, as well as in their social position, bore much resemblance to the English country gentleman, that favorite of history and romance. They had wealth, leisure, independence, opportunity and inducement for mental culture, the salutary retirement of the farm and plantation, the means for generous hospitality, field sports and the wholesome physical and moral influences, which mother earth exerts upon her lovers and servants. They were owners, generally hereditary owners, of the soil, the only possible foundation for a real gentry or aristocracy. But the subdivision of property, and the pernicious influence of slavery, have told upon Southern society. The old estates have been broken up, the old names have disappeared or are rapidly fading away. When wealth goes, culture and refinement, after a time, go with it, and are not restored by an upstart growth of newly made wealth. Cotton, meanwhile, has given hideous prominence to the sordid element of slavery. In thought and practice, slaves have been for many years regarded more in the light of property than before, because they have become five times more valuable; and whilst this mercenary spirit has been stimulated into a noxious growth in the planting States, cotton has created the business of slave-breeding in the border States.

No gentry can withstand such influences. It must soon cease to be a gentry; and when it falls, upon what can it fall, and what can it become in the South? Work it cannot, for there is no work to be done. The South has neither trade nor manufactures, nor the mechanic arts to afford worthy and sufficient employment to men of education. Where these are wanting, the ranks of the professions are soon filled to repletion. Small planters, living on fragments of a patrimonial estate, must be poor; therefore must become deficient in mental culture and refinement of manners. The large planters are new men, more especially in the Southwest, to which the sceptre has departed from the Atlantic States. What, then, has become of the gentry? It has almost disappeared. It is no longer a land and slave owner. It is selling cotton on commission in the cities; it is practising law and medicine in towns and wretched villages, or in half civilized, half wild, or