tralized country. The third party sought to conciliate the interests of the smaller and larger states; whence sprung the representation, in two grades, of the people and the states, each having its separate chamber. The amendments made in the Constitution introduced, on certain points, a clearness which was wanting to the original work. For instance: "The enunciation in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be interpreted in the sense of a negation or lessening of certain other rights reserved to the people."

Another article: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or not interdicted by it to the different states, are reserved to each state individually, or to the people."

The union thus constituted formed neither a nationality, nor a simple republic divided into provinces, nor a league of states without any power over individuals. In separating from the British Empire, the Americans had preferred to retain their thirteen sovereignties distinct, rather than to form a single state. This fractional division guaranteed them their lives, property, and municipal rights. On its side, the Federal Government was to serve for their defence against the foreigner in time of war, and, in time of peace, to protect the smaller states against the ambition of the larger.

This Constitution was adopted only by a certain number of the states forming part of the first Confederation, that which had victoriously brought to a conclusion the contest with the mother country. The other states took to it later, at different epochs, each in its quality of a sovereign state; so that the second union was formed from states withdrawing from the first, and three of them expressly reserved to themselves, when ratifying the act of this second Confederation, the right to withdraw from this also, if it seemed good to them. Virginia, when giving its assent, said, "We, delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected, &c., &c., declare and make known in its name that the powers granted according to the Constitution, proceeding from the people of the United States, can be resumed by it, in case any abuse be made

of them to do it wrong or oppress it." The States of New York and Rhode Island made analogous declarations.

It is a great mistake to think that the act of union was an inauguration of new principles. Each state had long enjoyed civil institutions which left nothing to be desired. The Federal tie had been merely conceived as a convenient means for mutual extension and protection. That was its mission. Principles guaranteeing individual liberty, or protecting the rights of each, had been defined five hundred years previously, with as much precision as vigour, in England, in the great charter of Runnymede; they had passed from thence into all the colonial charters, and formed at all times the basis of English institutions in America.

What was new, and what had a real value in the Federal Constitution, was the delicate adjustment of the relations between the state and the central government, whence resulted a harmonious whole. The division of powers between the States' Governments and the Federal Government, the first reserving to themselves their internal affairs, and all that affected the interests of the citizens, the second holding sway over all relations with the foreigner, and between the states themselves, was the triumph of local self-government, the importance of which was recognised. The two great political schools of America, the partisans of centralization and those of states-rights, naturally arose from the different manner of looking at the relations existing between the Central Government and the states. Now let us here touch on the question of slavery.

According to the idea of the centralizing party, all Northerners, the Federal Government, which exercised the power, had also the responsibility of it; and the existence of slavery ought to be regulated according to the greater or less extent of power which the Federal Government might have to restrain or abolish it. The partisans of states-rights replied, that each state had reserved to itself the sovereignty for the precise purpose of not

allowing to the Central Government the least pretext to meddle with internal affairs, of which slavery was one of the chief.*

These latter regarded the union as a contract between the states; the centralizing party looked upon it as a government above the states, and, consequently, superior to them.

The question of slavery must not be separated from what renders it complicate. It has got so entangled in all the past of the country, that, to study it from an æsthetic point of view, to make it the thesis of a declamation on morality, would be in the highest degree unjust. In the development of the political rivalship between the two regions of the American Union, North and South, it has been a mere incident imported with a good deal of cleverness, but with little caution. Slavery furnished a most seasonable battlefield to the opponents; it served as a line of demarcation ready traced; it was the most marked difference between the two rivals. Like the Trojan horse, it offered a very convenient vehicle by means of which to introduce discord and confusion into the heart of the edifice of the Constitution. Every one found there arms to his taste, offensive and defensive; the North saw in it a fact damaging the South, a ground on

* The Legislative Assemblies of Virginia and Kentucky, in 1798, passed some resolutions which very clearly defined, from the states-rights' point of view, the idea of people who foresaw the dangers of the future. Here is the first of these resolutions : "The different states composing the United States of America do not acknowledge themselves as obliged to a submission without limit to the Central Government. Under the name of Constitution of the United States, and amendments to that Constitution, they have established a General Government for a definitive end, delegating to this Government certain definite powers, but each state reserving to itself, for its own self-government, all the rest of its attributes. When, therefore, the General Government arrogates to itself powers not delegated, its acts are unauthorized, null, and of no effect. Each state is associated to this contract in its quality of sovereign state. The Government created by . this agreement can in nowise be constituted a judge without appeal of the powers conceded to it, since, in that case, it would be its moderation, and not the Constitution, which would fix the limit of its attributes. It follows, therefore, that, as in all contracts between parties not having a common judge, each party will have an equal right to judge for itself, both with regard to damage and redress."

which it would have for itself the sympathies of Europe; the South, exasperated because the North, formerly its ally (since it was associated with it in a participation of the cause), thrust in its face a disgrace, the responsibility of which mounted far back into the past, found in this proceeding a want of good faith, a case of the accused become accuser. In the long run the discussion grew envenomed; the attention became concentrated on this question; it threw all others into the shade; the occasion was substituted for the cause, and what at first was only a secondary incident came to be regarded as the principal subject of the strife.

In the early years of the new confederation, all measures relative to slavery were always voted in Congress without discussion, almost unanimously. Louisiana and Florida, slave territories, received their definitive organization without giving place to the least agitation. Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama entered into the Union without the fact of their being slave states making any difficulty. Not till 1820, upon the admission of the State of Missouri, whence resulted a compromise limiting slavery to a degree of latitude fixed beforehand, did the true nature of the controversy on slavery burst out; what had existed in a latent state for a long time then first became apparent, a political organization in the North opposed to another political organization in the South.

Slavery was an evil, a great evil, a frightful misfortune for that part of the American Continent afflicted with it. What endeavours have not been made, by Northerners and Southerners, with equity, charity, and moderation, to root out, little by little, this scourge; to restrain it within limits narrower and narrower; to accentuate still more the marked progress in the increase of the number of states, formerly slave-holding, which renounced the maintenance of negroes in slavery ! At the time of the declaration of independence, in 1776, Massachusetts was the only state which had no slaves. In 1861, of the thirteen original states, six,

Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey had abolished slavery. Two others of the states which founded the Union, Delaware and Maryland, were on the eve of doing so. A great majority of the more recently admitted states, some detached from the old states, others new territories promoted to the rank of states, had never known slavery. Missouri, Kentucky, the West, could hardly delay following the example of Maryland, so that the space occupied by slave states tended to diminish from year to year by an inevitable law. To wish to force events, and precipitate an issue already foreseen, was a criminal act, when one thinks of the interests at stake, the lives that were about to be put in peril, the complexity of the problems which would have to be solved. The ardour, the fury, the stubbornness, the injustice of the abolitionists, provoked the same ardour, the same fury, the same stubbornness, and the same injustice among their adversaries. Did the North appeal to the Bible and to the authority of the Scriptures? The South did likewise. Did the school of Mr. Sumner, the chief of the abolitionist party, cite acts of cruelty in the slave states? The partisans of the South recalled to it the condition of the free negroes in the North, where they were treated as a pestilence, absolutely forbidden to ride in a wagon or omnibus, to go into a church, temple, or theatre, or to rest in a cemetery reserved exclusively for the use of the white race. In Illinois, the foot of a negro could not tread upon the soil of the state. He exposed himself to be whipped and led back to the frontier. In other states, if he married a white he was soundly thrashed. The North forgot too readily, in attacking slavery, that it had long been particeps criminis. Only from the day when a considerable party in the free states believed it would be able to make use of the fact as a powerful lever against its associate, now become its rival-only from that day did it bethink itself to be shocked at the profound immorality.

The rivalry of interests between the two districts of the country,