with a Senate and House of Representatives, in which all legislative powers granted by the States were likewise to be vested. These powers were defined as given above and put on record in the constitution of the United States; and as every president has interpreted the constitution as a slave document, by usage and custom, it has put slaves in the same category with all other common property belonging to the United States, and given us a black heritage of shame and guilt that could never be covered up or concealed from the view of men with our high-sounding titles, such as our "great and wonderful Union "—our "freest Government of the world." And whilst the separate States who formed our federation of States reserved intact as sacred and supreme their sovereignties, they made provision that "nothing in the constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular State "-a provision which was ignored both in the Missouri Compromise, the Personal Liberty Bills adopted by five of the Free States, and also in the tariffs created to protect some States at the expense of others-the manufacturing against the agricultural. And moreover, the President or Congress of the United States thus created and appointed by the separate States had no power given them to interfere with any of the sovereign States in the Federal Union in any case of domestic violence, except on application of the legislature, or of the executive, or governor in the State where such violence takes place.

Taking into account, therefore, the equality of rights when each State joined the Union, and the arrangement that the burden of taxation should fall on all the States equally and not partially, any State or States denied their just rights had not only a ground for complaint, but a right to withdraw, when their law of compact was violated. And when President Lincoln called into requisition the army and navy of the United States to invade the Southern States, he ought to have been impeached at the bar of the Senate for levying war against the sovereign States of the South. And seeing that commissioners were sent by the seceding States to Washington to treat with the Federal Government, and to make a proper adjustment of all claims and questions arising therefrom, Lincoln was stripped of every constitutional plea to justify himself in his rash, mad, infamous policy of coercing the Southern States into the Union, or of seeking to promote their subjugation or extermination. And, strange to say, this view is ratified and confirmed by Lincoln in the following declaration which he made in his inaugural address on March 4, 1861, when he assumed the office of President :- "I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who nominated and elected me did so with the full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations, and had never revoked them. And more than this: they placed on the plat

form for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read :—‘Resolved-that the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."" Self-convicted and self-condemned, therefore, our socalled wise, just, and conscientious magistrate stands before the world guilty of trampling under his feet the "rights" of the Southern States in their withdrawal from the Union, and invading their sovereignties under the pretext of protecting Fort Sumter, thus committing on his own showing the "gravest of crimes."

Such being the terrible condition of things in America, let us look at the facts of the case in connection with the relationships which other nations sustain towards America, and the duties arising therefrom. In these relationships, whence does the President or Congress derive the powers which enable them to make treaties with other nations? Is it not from the representatives of the different States of the Union? When, therefore, the representatives of the Southern States withdrew from Congress, and the several States to which they belonged announced their separation from the United States, there was not a treaty made by the

United States previously with any Government on earth but was invalidated by that act, or impaired, just the same as a contract in any firm, when any partners withdraw from it. Now, if a contractor would not feel justified in going to sleep with his contract in his pocket when his interests are jeopardised, can those nations which have treaty contracts with America be excused for allowing their treaty rights to slumber, and going to sleep with their treaty rights in their possession?

When the Southern States withdrew from the Federal Union, the treaties of the United States with other nations from that hour ceased to be binding on the Southern States, and all nations that had treaties with America, and if they had no complaints to make they ought to have had, since the blockade of the Southern ports and coasts is just as much illegal and iniquitous as Lincoln committing any overt act of despotic power on land that interfered with their rights or invalidated their supremacy as sovereign States. Why, then, this interruption of commerce and confiscation of property in the shipping trade? And who is to blame for the open doors amongst the nations through which the wolf has come in to prey on themselves? There is either tremendous ignorance or a terrible connivance at the assumption of such arbitrary and despotic powers at Washington. But if safety lies in the pathway of duty, where is the wisdom, justice, or sound policy of being in such a position as that which the nations now present to the world that have treaties

with America? As John Bull was recently represented in your Exchange Newsroom, stretched on a "rack," with the governor of the Bank of England at his head. and a veiled figure, the "Times," at his feet, lever in hand, while the Chancellor of the Exchequer and others looked on with deep solicitude, as Lord Palmerston felt John's pulse to see how much he could endure under the tender mercies of his torturers—even so all nations may be fitly represented as being in a stupor towards America, for we cannot conceive that any of them, more especially the "great powers" amongst them, know their rights, and knowing dare not maintain them. Oh for some Luther to take the above facts and send them thundering down the sides both of the Old and New World, to reveal the handwriting on the walls at Washington, put a stop to all presidential jokes, as Lincoln makes himself merry over, his hand being in the "cranberry jam" of the States, and rouse the governments and peoples of the world to a sense of their duty. Could Luther arise from the dead, however, to perform such an essential service, he would have to break through all conventional forms and usages, and have to consent to be isolated, ostracised, have his name cast out as evil, and to wear titles much longer than those which form appendages to the names of our conventional wire-pullers in the new world; and not quite so graceful withal, as they would read "impotures, scoundrel, monster in human shape," &c., &c. The world would then have its ears regaled with another song which would go down the ages with its

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