and South journal and a National Emancipation Society. I need not say his plan fell to the ground; although everybody he spoke to on the subject, I believe, highly approved of his scheme.

For every disease a remedy may be proposed, and prove worse than the disease itself. Below what we thought the lowest depth a still lower deep opens. We have often but a choice of evils, each great and almost unbearable, all hard to choose among; the least evil being the greatest good. In human affairs very often bad is the best, as the saying is, and it is hard to imagine a condition of things which could not be worse. These are mere truisms; but Common expe

these truisms are apt to be forgotten. rience says, let well alone; but it is also often best to let ill alone for a time-to suffer wrong, and silently see injustice. For, in many respects, this world of ours is a very hard, unmanageable, and imperfectly understood world-quite a different one from what each of us thinks he would make, if he had the power,-seeing no necessity for human misery. Practically, indeed, in their own affairs, men seldom forget these truths; it is only when judging or advising others, that they become impracticably transcendental.

The history of this once despised Abolition party should be studied by all those who would Americanize British or any other institutions. By sacrificing everything else to their one object, namely, the destruction of negro-slavery in the Southern States, they succeeded in setting the North and South against each other. But their principles made no progress. The mass of the Northern people would at this moment be delighted to get rid of negroes

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Physician, heal Thyself.”

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and Abolitionists together; more especially of the latter. Still, the Abolitionists stuck to their one idea. They watched and studied the political game-they understood the working of their country's institutions; and the millions of the North, with all their boasted education, intelligence, freedom, free speech, free press, and so forth, have found themselves somehow fighting for a party and principles with which they had no sympathy: to which, in fact, they were strongly opposed.

These Yankee Abolitionists would also identify their schemes with British West India Emancipation, and claim the sympathy of British anti-slavery feeling; but the whole history of the course of this country on the subject is the most complete rebuke of their illegal, selfish, and unprincipled proceedings.

There are some who have a good deal to answer for, in having taught their fellow-countrymen to form so false and contemptuous an opinion of the slaveholding South that they thought to ride over it rough-shod and easily triumphant.

To all these one-idea'd meddlers the slaveholding AngloSaxon of the Confederated States can truthfully say, "Let your charity begin at home; show some wisdom in your own affairs, before going forth to set the world in order; at least, leave me alone. In my reviled and calumniated country, the black man and the white live side by side peacefully and mutually helpful; both increasing in numbers and well-being, both sharing in the benefits of civilization; and although the black man is still in a very inferior condition compared with his white master, yet he is in a very superior condition compared

with that of his ancestors-his African grandfathers and grandmothers in their lurid Africa, sunk in hideous time-immemorial abominations. Under our system, he runs no risk of extermination, and enjoys the best oppor tunity yet offered him of showing his capabilities; no longer a mere savage, he plays an important part in the progress of civilization, which elsewhere is crushing him out of existence."

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CHAPTER XVIII.

State Constitutions-New York Constitution-Theory of Equal Rights abandoned-Extent of State Sovereignty-Coloured People-Extent of Powers of the United States Constitution-A Treaty between Sovereign States for Foreign and Inter-State Purposes-Fugitive Slave Provision in the Constitution of United States-Repudiated by Pennsylvania, &c.-Constitutionality of the South-Written Constitution no Safeguard against actual Powers-Constitution of Mexico for Example.

It is a considerable difficulty, in the way of forming a correct public opinion on important matters, that a large portion of the public have a habit of skipping the dry parts of the volumes they condescend to read. To arrive at the truth, a little such reading is often necessary.

The British public have heard and read a good deal about the Constitution of the United States. It should be remembered that it is, in fact, a one-sided instrument. Fairly to understand the document, it should be compared with the Constitutions of the several States.

After reading a Union representation of the Federal Constitution, an ordinary careless reader might suppose that the United States had a Government as centralized and consolidated as that of England or France; but each State had large powers and rights reserved. The following abstract of the Constitution of New York State may be taken as a specimen of those separate Governments

which must be included in any complete view of the political system of the Republic. Having perused it, probably the reader will be inclined to wonder what was left for the Government at Washington to do. He will be apt to think that, whatever might be the letter of the law, its spirit would certainly impel a State with such a Constitution to judge for itself as to its own rights and wrongs, in case of any real or supposed attack upon its welfare and independence.

Gentlemen of high position and commanding influence, have compared the secession of the several Southern States from the Union to a secession of Ireland, or even Yorkshire or Cornwall, from the British Government; they ask, "If you commence secession, where are you to stop? If the South may leave the Union, any State may leave the South; the west of a State may secede from the east, and so on." Of course, men can always argue thus in morals and politics; in those domains of science, Nature has drawn few clear, visible, straight lines. In this case, self-interest, self-preservation, nature, and a little common sense, combine to limit national powers and boundaries. If it be for the good of mankind, that the whole continent of North America should not be directed and controlled by an aspiring and overbearing central government at Washington, it surely does not follow that this compact, tight little island of Great Britain-not so large as the average of each of the thirty-two States forming the huge United States--should be divided into two or three kingdoms or republics.

The United States is a sort of abstraction created by the independent States: they can constitutionally alter