yeoman. It gave him a strong government, white freemen, it had, in 1860, 402,406 and yet enabled him to feel, in some sense, on a level with his government. And among the small farmers of this kind, who are the great country party of the Northern States, a very important element in the poorer soils and mountain districts of the Slave States, and of some little weight even in the South, there never was any feeling but one of almost passionate conservatism for the Union. They did not much care to change anything. They did not realize the evil of slavery, and were quite willing-so far, like English Toriesto let it alone. But they would rather have sacrificed anything than their favorite form of government,-the actual constitution under which they live always taking a strong hold on the imagination of land-owners, and a republican constitution taking especial hold on the imagination of a popular class of freeholders. North Carolina and East Tennessee, especially the latter, belong distinctly to this group of Slave States. In North Carolina the slaves are not, indeed, less numerous in proportion to the white population than they formerly were in Virginia; but they are held on small farms instead of on large tobacco plantations. Mr. Olmsted wrote long ago: The aspect of North Carolina with regard to slavery is, in some respects, less lamentable than that of Virginia. There is not only less bigotry upon the subject, and more freedom of conversation, but I saw here, in the institution, more of patriarchal character than in any other State. The slave more frequently appears as a family servant-a member of his master's family, interested with him in his fortune, good or bad. This is a result of the less concentration of wealth in families or individuals, occasioned by the circumstances I have described. Slavery thus loses much of its inhumanity;" and we now see this poverty, this small-farm system, telling in favor of the Union sentiment. In East Tennessee the same cause is far more strongly at work. That department of the State gave a majority against Secession of more than two to one, an absolute majority of 18,155, in spite of an incursion of Confederate soldiers, who voted at the elections like the Missouri Border Ruffians in Kansas. The State was carried for Secession, but the mountain part of it was thoroughly penetrated by Union feeling. In this eastern part of the State, there were in 1860 but 26,504 slaves to a total population of 282,021 inhabitants, or less than one in ten; and, again, we hear from Mr. Olmsted, and many other authorities, how opposed to slavery extension was the sentiment therehow favorable to the Union.

South Carolina is the centre of the opposite feeling. There the system of plantation slavery attains its climax. With only 291,388

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slaves, a larger proportion of slaves to whites than in any other State of the Union; and there is abundant evidence that these are chiefly distributed on the large system, not as farm laborers, but as plantation gangs. In some counties the black population is more than six times the white. Here, then, as in Mississippi, we have the very centre of the market feeling towards slaves-the speculative, restless feeling engendered by large profits and an economic use of slaves,-for it is certain that the most effective use of the system, in a business point of view, is also the most fatal to the slave and to his relations with his master. Here the sense of mere ownership, as distinguished from Mr. Carlyle's "hiring for life," reaches its highest point, and here, consequently, the political results of slavery take their most characteristic and angry form. South Carolina has always represented and even exaggerated the violent and domineering position of the Southern States. It was South Carolina that led the way to disunion by nullification of the tariff in 1832, when she was so summarily put down by President Jackson; it was South Carolina which led the way in advocating secession again, just before the Southern victory on the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850; in 1855 it was a representative of South Carolina (Mr. Brooks) who so truculently assaulted and half killed Mr. Sumner in the Senate House, who was presented with a cane by the ladies of South Carolina for that piece of brutality, and when expelled from the House of Representatives was immediately sent back to it by his enraptured constituents. It was South Carolina's glorious example and flag which inspired the Border Ruffians in Kansas in 1856; it was the Senate of South Carolina which first carried a resolution in favor of re-opening the slave trade in 1859: vigilance committees in South Carolina offered rewards for the heads of their enemics (anti-slavery agitators) after the election of Mr. Lincoln; it was the convention of this State which first decreed separation; and it was South Carolina which first seized the Government-fort, Moultrie, and which committed the first act of war in assaulting Fort Sumter. South Carolina has, in short, been the typical Slave State,-its political history throughout the Union having been one of violence, passion, and truculence,-of political gambling and adventure; its characteristic temperament that which the plantation system, with its large gains and cruel method, cherishes, but which there gains still greater power by its alliance with more political capacity and experience than could till very recently be found in the new Cotton States on the Gulf.

We may be sure that if the North can

gain and hold firmly Mississippi. Louisiana, to effect, will be to prevent such vessels and the political spring of the rebellion, South from leaving our ports ready armed and Carolina, there will not long be any sufficient equipped, and therefore in a condition to detheatre for the speculative plantation system fend themselves against capture, or to inflict which inspired the great desire for slavery ex- injury on their enemies. The cruisers of the tension, and even for the re-opening of the menaced party must do the rest. We inslave trade. The small freeholders of the cline, moreover, to think not only that this mountain States and the poor soils are not in is all the Act can do, but that it is all it was any way friendly to the grand Secession designed to do. If it sought to do more, it schemes. On their soil slavery would grad- was so ambiguously worded and leaves open ually die out, and die unregretted. And the so many avenues of evasion, as to be insuffidanger will be lest the North now make too cient for its end; and if the Government atmuch concession to their wishes. The virus tempts to make it do more, its uncertainty of the slavery policy is to be found in South and the feebleness of its grasp will probably Carolina and the Gulf States, though Vir- become obvious. Now the interpretation of ginia has hitherto chivalrously interposed her an existing law is a matter for the judges and noble and hardier race between the principal tribunals of the land; the execution of the offenders and their foes. The small yeomanry law as so interpreted is a matter for the Adof the Slave States will be found, in general, ministration; but the question whether the far more favorable to the Union than to the law shall be amended or supplemented so as dangerous and ambitious schemes of the pro- to meet the demands and complaints of foreign slavery crusaders. powers, is a matter for the country and for Parliament, and must be decided on grounds of policy and not on technical points. It will be well, therefore, to consider gravely and dispassionately whether it would be prudent or expedient to pass an enactment calculated to throw any impediment in the way of the development of the special branch of industry in which Mr. Laird's building-yard has attained such a marked pre-eminence.

From The Economist, 19 Sept. RIGHT OF BRITISH SHIPWRIGHTS TO

BUILD IRONCLADS.

Ir is now understood that the Government have made up their minds not to allow the two steam-rams constructed in Messrs. Laird's yards at Birkenhead to leave the Mersey unless satisfactory evidence can be furnished that they are not built for the Confederate Government, nor likely on some merely colorable pretext to find their way into that service. They have not been formally seized, but a distinct intimation has been conveyed to the builders that they will be seized should such a step become necessary. We discussed the general question as to the law, justice, and expediency of seizures of this nature so fully last week, that we only refer to the subject again because there is one feature in the case which has not, we think, received the attention it deserves.

We have no hesitation in answering this question in the negative. The inducements to pass such an enactment are temporarythe wish to conciliate the United States and to avoid a possible quarrel with that irritated people. The inducements to abstain from such an enactment are enduring, general, and overwhelmingly strong, and are based upon a regard for the manifest and permanent interests of England.

No ephemeral object of political expediency can be so momentous as the securing to Great Britain the supremacy in such a branch of trade as the construction of ships of war. No temporary danger can be so great as the sufAlthough the Government, from motives offering this supremacy to pass into other hands. policy, are wisely resolved to attempt to exercise the power which the clause in the foreign Enlistment Act is supposed to give them of stopping the construction and sale of vessels of war to the American belligerents, we scarcely apprehend that, in the event of an appeal to the tribunals, they will be more successful in the case of these ironclads than they were in that of the Alessandra. It may perhaps be well to try, though it is damaging to the Executive authority to fail. The real intent and scope of the law must be admitted to be open to dispute. All things considered, however, we apprehend that all which the existing law, as interpreted and carried out by the ordinary courts of justice, will be able

All our efforts should be directed to make ourselves the great war ship-builders in the world, to surpass all rivals, to engross all orders, to prevent any serious competition from springing up elsewhere. Every fresh experience of actual warfare, every fresh development of naval and military science, alike point to the conclusion that ironclads and steamrams, and monitors, and war vessels of yet undreamed construction, will hereafter be the most formidable instruments both for attack and defence; and that the nation which can build these best, can build them fastest, can build them in the greatest numbers, will have a superiority inalienable, unassailable, and decisive over all other nations. We need this

Laird personally and directly is no loser by any of these interferences. Very possibly he is paid beforehand; possibly also he may contract to build and deliver in his own yards, and not on any foreign station. But how elsewhere, by the dread of these interferences? many orders may be withheld, or directed People who give orders wish them executed with punctuality-wish to be able to rely upon the execution of them with certainty. A few such disappointments or involuntary breaches of contract as have occurred in the Birkenhead shipyard, would induce most customers to take their orders to some foreign rival of Mr. Laird, who had no Enlistment Act to fear. It may be that at present he has no rivals elsewhere who can approach him; but there can be no doubt that, if he had, such a restrictive law as ours, and such action as our Government has founded upon that law, would act as a bonus of fifty per cent. to such rivals; and under such a bonus foreign rivals would spring up rapidly; and such a bonus would go far to neutralize all original advantages of capital, iron, enterprise, and skill. ers that expected to become belligerentsMost belligerentswould decide to order an inferior vessel from a Belgian or a French shipwright, which they could rely upon receiving, to a very superior might be confiscated just when they were exone from the Mersey or the Clyde, which pecting it most anxiously.

RIGHT OF BRITISH TO BUILD IRONCLADS. superiority more than any other country, be- | trade of building ships of war. They amount cause we are richer and more envied, more to an impediment which can scarcely be overcommercial, and with more extensive and estimated. It may be true enough that Mr. scattered domains than any other; and because we are more maritime and less military than most other great powers. We shall be less likely to misuse this superiority, because we are more just, less aggressive, and more pacific than any of our principal rivals. have this superiority now; we have every moWe tive for retaining it; we have every facility for clinging to it, augmenting it, improving it into absolute and uncontested supremacy. If our vessels of war are in all respects the best that can be made anywhere—if they are newer, better designed, better constructed, more formidable and resistless-we shall gradually acquire something like a virtual monopoly in the art-an art, in the present unfortunate state of the world, about the most important and lucrative that any nation can practise. With such a virtual monopoly we shall be safe. To the acquisition of such a virtual monopoly all the exertions of our scientific engineers, all the enterprise of our manufacturing firms, all the encouragement and facilities legitimately affordable by our Government, ought to be directed in unison. It is not merely the establishment of a profitable branch of trade that is at stake-it is the future security and peace of our native land. If we are right in the high estimate we form of the national value of unquestioned preponderance in the shipwright's art,and who will say that we are wrong?-then surely, the notion of hampering, or punishing, or discouraging those who devote themselves and their wealth and talents to its pros-justice, it would seem advisable that the ecution, is the very last which an English Government or Legislature should entertain; -and to forego this needed and desirable supremacy, or run any risk of impairing it, or jeopardize it in any fashion, for the sake of averting the anger of those who were angry with us before the keel of the Florida was laid, and who will be angry with us still if a dozen Alessandras were to be seized, would be the wretchedest bargain ever made on earth since Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. The French Government, we may be quite certain, would never dream of throwing away natural advantages like ours, for any such motive, or by any such interference.

It will scarcely be argued that such seizures as that intended in the case of the Alabama, and actually carried out in the case of the Alessandra, and such embargoes as those laid on the steam-rams in dock, do not amount to an impediment or a discouragement of the

-or pow

Now, as a matter of wise policy and plain

builders of ships in this country should be relieved from disadvantages and fetters. By the common law of nations, a vessel of war is a commercial commodity in which neutral citizens may innocently, though at their own hazard, deal. We ought to announce to the world, what we surely must be sensible of ourselves, that the trade of constructing ships of all sorts is so vital to the interests of this country, that under no circumstances will we sanction any obstacles which could limit or discourage its development. Let the nation consider this matter well. It has an importance far transcending any mere question as We honor the inventor of the Armstrong to the technical violation of existing law. guns: why should we vituperate and persecute the most successful builder of steamrams, or floating-batteries, or swift-sailing cruisers?

From The Spectator, 19 Sept.
MR. LINCOLN'S LETTER.

now directed. There remains a compromise, and this is the solution to which Democrats really look. They think in a vague and illdefined but still very evident way that, by offering the South new guarantees or new powers, or a new position within the Union,.

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LANGUAGE with Mr. Lincoln is certainly no instrument for concealing thought. It is difficult to imagine anything more lucid, more oppressively clear, than the quaint state-for example, by making the Presidency depaper which he has addressed in the form of pend on a majority within both sections,a letter to the Unionist League held in the they might tempt the wayward sisters back capital of Illinois. The almost brutal direct- to the ancient home. They believe, and, inness which is the specialty of working men's deed, say, that there are groups of men in the politics is just tempered, and as it were clar- South who only want security, and that it is ified, by passing through the brain of a half- the leaders rather than the people who so abbred lawyer; but it still visibly impresses solutely reject all terms. Mr. Lincoln meets itself on the thought. The letter is evident- all that theory by a point-blank denial of its ly the President's own, and with all whose data. There may, of course, be Union men brains are not clouded by a fastidious taste it in the South, and he is for many reasons carewill raise the existing estimate of his sagacity. ful not to deny that such a class may exist. It is at once a defence of his policy, an argu- But it is at best powerless. It is the Southment for its continuance, and a speculation ern army which rules the South, and, thereupon the future, all couched in language the fore, the Southern army with whom a comlaboring masses can comprehend, and all promise, if it is to be made at all, must be frank to a degree which, if fatal to dignity, arranged. Any offer of terms made by any strongly tends to produce conviction. Mr. man or men in opposition to that army is Lincoln seizes in a moment on the two points simply nothing for the present, because such which excite dissension within the North, and man or men have no power whatever to enaddresses himself to them and them only. force their side of a compromise, if one were Passing by all minor criticisms in a silence made with them." No "compromise will which, were he a cultivated man, Englishmen keep General Lee's army out of Pennsylvawould acknowledge to be magnanimous, he nia,” and, therefore, no compromise, unless addresses himself to his real opponents, those made with Lee, can possibly produce a peace. who dislike war as a means of preserving the The only body which could ensure peace is Union, and those who dislike emancipation that which rules the army, and from that even as a war measure. It is on these two body" no word or intimation has to the Prespoints that, as he well knows, internal re- ident's knowledge ever come. All charges sistance is alone to be feared. He says noth- and intimations to the contrary are deceptive ing of state rights, for the nation has already or groundless," for had they arrived they decided that they must be kept in abeyance; would have been at once explained to the nothing of the conscription, for if the people people. The rulers of the South, in other accept his end they must also furnish the words, intend to fight on, and there is nothmeans; nothing of the "invasions of consti- ing for it but either to give them their way, tutional law," for, his object once acknowl- i.e., dissolve the Union, or to fight on too, edged to be that of the people, those also and decide at last which of the two great secwill pass in silence. He devotes himself tions can enforce its will. It would be diffientirely to the two real grounds of opposi-cult to state the whole case more accurately, tion, and on both all candid men must admit for, be it remembered, the President is not he makes out a case far better than any which addressing Englishmen. Most of us think, the pens of his party have as yet made for him.

His assertion is that his war policy, wise or unwise, righteous or wicked, popular or disliked, is still inevitable. The constant assertion of Democrats is that they want peace, and Mr. Lincoln at once accepts peace as his first object also; but how is it to be obtained? The Union may be given up, and that would produce immediate peace; but before that step can be taken the people must give their assent, which they have shown no disposition to do. Peace may also be conquered; but that Mr. Lincoln is striving to the best of his power to effect, and it is not to the conduct of the war that opposition is

even those who are friendly to the North, that the North would act wisely in offering one form of compromise, namely, independence within the Mississippi, if only for the sake of setting themselves right with Europe. But Mr. Lincoln knows his people, knows that their object is not this or that boundary, but the Union-the splendid dream of an empire which shall cover a continent and be the refuge of the human race. It is his own dream also, and he passes by the fourth alternative with as supreme an indifference as any king could show to a proposal for conceding terms to rebels in arms. Within his own limits, however, the argument is as irrefragable as it is clearly stated. The South asks

MR. LINCOLN'S LETTER.

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nothing save a dissolution of the Union, there- | whatever. He simply says that, "whatever fore to preserve the Union the South must negroes can be got to do as soldiers leaves just be defeated. That is no answer to outside as much less for white soldiers to do." critics who, like ourselves, look on the Union negrocs, like other people, act upon motives; as at best a very doubtful good; but it is a why should they do anything for us if we do But full answer to his own internal critics, and it nothing for them? If they stake their lives will have a tremendous effect. Half the agi- for us they must be prompted by the strongtation existing in the States arises from the est motive, even the promise of freedom, and belief that some kind of compromise is still the promise being made, must be kept." It possible, that the South has made secret is not very elevated all that, or very cloquent. offers, that the war is not exclusively waged and it wants to English cars some admission for the maintenance of the Union. Mr. Lin- of those rights existing in the negro on which coln's letter will dispel that belief, for both all questions of emancipation must always be parties, whatever their view of his character, ultimately based. But it exactly meets the know him to be utterly honest, and will ac-objections which occur to the Democratic cept his word. The result will be to produce freeholder, and supported as it is by the facts, in the North the conviction already rooted viz., that negroes can, and will, for the price in the President's mind that the alternatives for America lie between an independent South and a South avowedly subjugated by arms. As no section in the North is as yet prepared for any result which does not include the Union, the effect will be to intensify the public conviction of the necessity for war, and, therefore, to diminish pro tanto public resistance to the measures without which the war cannot be carried on.

offered, give the service demanded, it will soothe away half the objections a juster utterance would have increased. Even an Irishman can understand that for every black man more there is a white man the less, and that if the black beyond the range of conscription is asked for aid, he must be paid in the price he prefers. He can, it may be urged, see that without the President's aid; and that is On the second point, emancipation, the ment tends to disabuse him of the idea that undoubtedly true. But the brief official stateletter is not remarkable so much for its argu- motives other than military expediency have ments, though these are sufficiently forcible, governed the enlistment of the 22,000 blacks as for the shrewdness with which Mr. Lin- now in the Northern service, and, therefore, coln meets the popular Northern mind. meets not the difficulties which suggest them- ble changes which, and not the existing facts, He to remove that vague fear of coming or possiselves to educated men, or to Englishmen, or excite his apprehension. The effect is simply even to fanatic pro-elavery men, but simply to intensify that process so often described in those which are present to the average Amer- our columns, the slow growth of the Northican brain. He does not say that the negro ern conviction that slavery, whether righteous being a man has a right to be free, though or evil, based on Scripture or born of avarice, he implies that that is his private thought, is inconsistent with the existence of the but a t argues the matter simply on legal grounds. Union, with the realization of the one dream If the negro is anything except a citizen of which gives color and brilliance to the otherthe United States or an alien sojourning there, wise earthy American life. That conviction in either of which cases the proclamation was has reached the President, who is still, if not at least legal, he is property. Being property in his reasoning powers, at least in his irused to assist the war, the Commander-in- stincts, the Western working man. Chief of the army had a right to seize it, or always been with, not before, the mass of the destroy its usefulness, and the proclamation freeholders, and his letter is one more proof He has did no more. The President indulges in no that freedom for the black is becoming one philanthropy, breaks into no enthusiasm, of their fixed ideas. The whole drift of Mr. obviously cares as little as other Americans Lincoln's letter, therefore, we take to be this, about the negro himself. He simply defends that the war will proceed until the South is his right under any theory as to the negro subdued, or re-enters the Union free, or by status to destroy his master's use of him for freeing the blacks deprives the North of their military purposes. So with respect to the one essential weapon. In either of those second offence of arming the black man. The three cases slavery is doomed. President does not plead any abstract idea|