holders. When the Constitution was framed the South demanded a provision for the recovery of her fugitive slaves, and she got it; she demanded a representation in Congress for three-fifths of her whole slave population, and it was granted; she demanded the right to continue the slave-trade unmolested for twenty years, and she secured that. These are the "compromises of the Constitution," of which so much has been said and so little understood. That relating to the slave-trade expired by its own limitation in 1808; the other two remained in full force, as valid and as faithfully observed on the day of the commencement of the present rebellion, as on the day of Washington's Farewell Address. In 1803, the South demanded the vast Louisiana Territory, lying west of the Mississippi river; and she obtained it at an expense of $15,000,000 to the national treasury. There were other and weighty motives for the acquisition of this wide domain; but the South saw that it would early increase the number of slave States, and add to her already disproportionate representation in Congress. In 1819, she demanded the Florida Territory as another prospective slave State; and she obtained that, at an expense to the Nation of $5,000,000, paid for purchase money, and in the Seminole war which we purchased with Florida, we expended $80,000,000 more. In 1845, on the express grounds, as stated by Mr. Calhoun, who was then Secretary of State, of its importance to the slave-holding interests of the South, she demanded Texas; and she obtained it, at an expense of war with Mexico, costing the Nation, besides the lives of thousands of brave men, more than $200,000,000, Texas came in immediately as a State, bringing her re-enforcement of slave representation to both Houses of Congress. But this was not all. The South not only secured Texas as a ready ally, but the authority, when there should be sufficient population, to construct four more slave States out of that domain. At the beginning of the present rebellion, there were in the Union, present and prospective, nine slave States -five already admitted, and four more expressly provided for -formed out of Territory acquired from foreign nations by treaty or conquest, since the formation of the Government; -nine slave States, acquired at the expense of more than $500,000,000, of which more than four-fifths have been paid by the free States. Nine slave States were already se

cured, and with the admission of the last one, came the first free State formed of acquired Territory. So stood the account on the admission of Iowa and Florida, yet the South complains of unfriendly legislation in Congress. Still further; as we have seen, in 1820, the South demanded the admission of Missouri as a slave State, with the Missouri Compromise, and she obtained that; in 1850, she demanded a more stringent law for the recovery of her fugitive slaves, and she obtained that; in 1854, she wanted a new slave State that should be ready to come in with Oregon; no region of her wide, slave-cursed domain gave her any promise, and she determined to make a slave State of a portion of that Territory from which, in 1820, she had excluded slavery by an Act of Congress; so she demanded the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and she obtained that; and then, to cap the climax, she demanded of the Supreme Court a decision that should give some color of justice to her treachery, and she got that. So far from being injured and wronged by unfriendly legislation, she has had every thing her own way. There has been no act of national legislation prejudicial to Southern interests; and there could not well be; for the South has had the control of the Govment, in one or more of its branches, ever since the Constitution was adopted. And the measures of which she has complained most, are precisely those which were first introduced and most earnestly supported by Southern members of Congress :-namely, the high Tariff, and the exclusion of slavery from the Territories. Accusing the North of sectionalism, the South have been constantly governed by the most intense and narrow sectional spirit. In sixteen Presidential elections the South never gave her vote for President to any native of the free States. Mr. Pierce, in 1852, on the seventeenth Presidential election, was the first man of Northern birth, who ever received a majority of the electoral votes of the slave States for President. And for more than seventy years, but three Presidents were elected who did not receive the electoral vote of the slave States. We need no further evidence how completely and almost invariably the South have succeeded in controling the Government. If, therefore, they have sustained any injury at the hand of the national Government, they must bear the responsibility themselves.

And now, how stood the case, when South Carolina adopted her ordinance of secession? The North, for the first time in twenty-four years, had elected a President to whom the South had not given her vote. But he had not taken his seat. They had the control of the House of Representatives; they had the control of the Senate; they had the control of every important department in the Cabinet; they had the control of the President; they had the control of the Supreme Court. And-what may seem a little strange, when we remember how intense the agitation has been upon that special point-there is not now a foot of Territory within the national domain from which slavery is excluded by any Act of Congress, or, it is believed, by any statute law whatever. So far as any prohibitory legislation is concerned, the slave-holder had full liberty to take his slaves with him wherever he pleased, within any of the Territories of the United States.

We proposed only to examine the reasons assigned by the Southern leaders for their present attitude of hostility to the national Government. We have reviewed those reasons with some care, and we fail to find in them the least shadow of justification for the course the South are pursuing. We indulge in no invective; we venture no prophecy; but if God is on the side of justice; if God is on the side of truth; if God is on the side of honesty, integrity, uprightness, and open, manly dealing; if God is on the side of humanity; if God is on the side of freedom and civilization, of religion and the eternal principles of the Gospel of Christ;-then, however severely he may chasten us for our delinquencies in regard to this matter, this rebellion can never succeed.

A. R. A.

ART. X.

Hints of Immortality in the Moral Nature of Man.

THE certainty for which men seek in matters of religious faith ever eludes us. Faith must always be something other

than knowlege, as the latter word is usually apprehended. Knowledge is something predicated, either of the experience of our senses or of some intellectual perception or deduction. The truths of mathematics being based upon the intellectual perceptions-not merely the perceptions of one man but of all men-remain undisputed. And while there is a remarkable agreement among men in regard to their belief in a few great central truths of religion, there is yet no such unanimity of opinion as we find in respect to truths of the senses or the intellect. Then, also, among all those who profess to believe there are manifestly an almost infinite number of degrees of faith.

No truth is more clearly revealed in the human consciousness than that of retribution. In all parts of the world we find men who have attained to the simplest ideas, recognizing in speech and action the great doctrine of retribution. We find the doctrine itself corroborated and sustained by experience, and yet retribution cannot be said in strictness to be a matter of absolute knowledge. It is plain that men do not act upon their belief in retribution as they do upon the received truths of mathematics. If they did so act, sin would in a very short time be banished from the world. For the same instinctive selfishness, that now leads to the commission of it, would, in that case, shield us from it. Men would not do what was certain to yield on the whole misery rather than happiness. Experience, while we say in general terms it proves the doctrine, does not so establish it as to put it forever beyond cavil. It is not demonstrable by human experience that every transgression of a moral law is followed by condign punishment; for all the consequences of a moral action are not realized in any given portion of time; and perhaps not this side of the shore of eternity. There are certainly many good men and women who are greatly afflicted in this world; and many bad ones that seem to pass along rather smoothly to say the least-hard, cruel men, who yet have good digestion and sleep well at night, and from whom no sigh of despondency escapes. Sound men do not infer from this that they are exceptions to the great law of compensation. But if we were attempting to convert a sceptic to the doctrine by appealing to human experience, such cases would puzzle us. However desirable more perfect knowledge might seem to be in respect to those things 13 .

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that are already matters of faith, it is not difficult to see that a wise Providence may have beneficent ends to subserve by keeping from us this absolute knowledge that we so much desire. It is better that our comfort should be a little farther off if by that reason it shall be in the end more solid and enduring. It is certainly better for us, so far as character is concerned, that we should act from the love of good itself than from the mere hope of reward. Who would not be just to-day if he knew he should be fully paid for it at night? Good can only be good when performed with no regard to self. By this relation, our certainty, then, so far as relates to the awards of our good and our ill, the distinction between good and bad men, is established and the reality of character is formed. No man was ever made in love with moral excellence merely by hearing its praises sounded or its rewards dwelt upon. Moral excellence only seems such to us when it gives contrast to the moral nature. When the cultivated eye looks upon a work of art of great excellence, a sufficient reward (if it be proper to call it such) is experienced in the pleasure that is afforded the cultivated sense. So when we contemplate a character of rare moral excellence, the sense of beauty and the soul of harmony are touched within us. By that beau ideal that God has stamped upon our own soul we recognize this sublime handiwork of God, and it gives a contentment that no inferior good can. All art seems poor compared with this spiritual beauty. No temple built by human hands can compare with this temple of God.

The points now presented upon retribution will apply perhaps with equal pertinency to the doctrine of immortality. It may be better for us as moral and spiritual beings that this doctrine should act as it now does upon faith than that it should be a matter of demonstration. We are mistaken if we suppose that a knowledge of the mere fact of a future existence would satisfy us. When once that question were answered satisfactorily, other cognate questions would at once be started that would demand an answer quite as imperiously as the former, and our knowledge of the former fact would be a very mockery of desire if these others could not be answered for us also. The question would then be, If I am to live again after I shall have "shuffled off this mortal coil," where and how shall it be? What employments