duction than Bishop Hopkins's proslavery tract. Here is Professor Morse's view of the social system ordained by God.

"What, then, is the Social System which God has ordained?

"It consists of four distinct, clearly defined, but co-operative relations, thus laid down in the New Testament:

"First.

CIVIL GOVERNMENT, in which the relation of Ruler and Ruled is ordained.

"Second. The MATRIMONIAL; in which the relation of Husband and Wife is ordained.

"Third.

is ordained.

The PARENTAL; in which the relation of Parent and Child
And

"Fourth. The SERVILE; in which the relation of Master and Slave is ordained.

"Now, here we have drawn out by the pen of inspiration a perfect social system, the Divine plan adapted to man as a fallen being, in his disciplinary state; that is to say, to man as he is. Let us examine its

structure.

"In these four relations we discover several significant traits. They are seen to be co-operative, they each perform an essential part in the discipline of man, and act conjointly, each in its own sphere, to produce. the same great result which the mission of the Saviour was intended to produce, to wit, the establishment of Obedience in the soul of man. There is a unity of purpose in this arrangement which reveals the mind and hand of the same Divine Author." p. 8.

--

"Have those," he continues, "who pronounce slavery to be sin, actually considered the fearful responsibility they incur by the utterance of such a reckless, and, we will say, such a sacrilegious dogma? Will the advocates of this dogma tell us on what principle they endeavor to sustain the validity of civil government, the matrimonial relation, and the parental relation, as ordinances of God, in each of which the essential idea of slavery, obedience to a superior, is inherent, and then single out the fourth relation, the servile relation, which, by Divine command, is as distinctly and unqualifiedly regulated and made as much a component part of the social system as the others, and not only deny it to be an ordinance of God, but declare it to be sinful?". "How can we account for this monomania in regard to slavery, which has seized upon so many otherwise sane minds? It must be that most, if not all, of those so fierce in denouncing slavery, are deceived by an imaginary monster, dressed up by their imaginations with every attribute that is hideous and revolting, and which can excite disgust and horror; to them, slavery, tyranny, and oppression are synonymous, and

-

p. 8.

in their speeches, sermons, and prayers they are convertible terms, and are thus indiscriminately used. They have made a man of straw, and, with all the visionary enthusiasm of a Quixote, are fiercely bent on a valiant encounter with this phantom, the creation of their own heated fancy. Is it possible to reason with men thus exalted? Will they calmly, as well as boldly, look this phantom full in the face? If they will, they cannot but perceive that those traits which have excited their horror, seen through the mist with which a proud infidel philosophy has enveloped them, are altogether extrinsic and accidental, it is not the slavery of the Bible, nor of the Southern States, but a creature of their own imagination, clothed in a frightful livery, which has, studiously and persistently for years, been made up for it, from the abuses of the system." p. 9.

Yes! the traits which have excited horror are altogether extrinsic and accidental, are not traits of the slavery of the Southern States! The sales by public auction of men and women, the overworking and whipping and branding of men and women, the breeding of children for profit, the subjection of the slave to the passions of his master, are altogether extrinsic and accidental, are not characteristic of Southern slavery. Mr. Olmsted has made a man of straw. Mrs. Kemble has drawn from her imagination. Jefferson in denouncing slavery was fired with the visionary enthusiasm of a Quixote. General Ullmann saw through a mist of proud, infidel philosophy, when he wrote from New Orleans, June 6, 1863, to Governor Andrew: "Every man [freed negro] presenting himself to be recruited strips to the skin. My surgeons report to me that not one in fifteen is free from marks of severe lashing. More than one half are rejected because of disability from lashing with whips, and the biting of dogs on calves and thighs. It is frightful. Hundreds have welts on their backs as large as one of your largest fingers." But all this is extrinsic and accidental! If facts give the lie to Professor Morse, let him settle it with them. But there is nothing, says Sainte-Beuve, so brutal as a fact.

But it is not enough for Professor Morse to declare the mildness and beauty of Southern slavery. He must show also that it is salutary and benevolent. He says:

"The servile relation is a government adapted to just such a race

[a weak and degraded race]; and God, in his wisdom and far-sighted benevolence, has ordained that despised and vilified relation as the means of bringing that race home to himself. This is the Bible theory, and the experience of the day sustains it in both aspects of the question. When the relation of master and slave is left to its natural workings, under the regulations divinely established, and unobstructed by outside fanatic busybodyism, the result, on the enslaved and on society at large, is salutary and benevolent. When resisted, as it is by the Abolitionism of the day, we have only to look around us to see the horrible fruits, in every frightful and disorganizing and bloody shape." — p. 17.

"It is not slavery," he cries, "it is Abolitionism, that is our national sin, and a sin flagrant enough, too, to call down the judgments under which we suffer." (p. 17.) With a logic worthy of the resolutions of a Democratic convention, he declares: "No one who examines, even in the most cursory manner, the aspect of public affairs, but must perceive that it is this war upon slavery, and not slavery, which is the apple of discord in church and state." (p. 18.)

Alas for the President of the Diffusionists! we fear it is only those who examine affairs in the most cursory manner" who will assent to his conclusion. There is much more of this same sort in this ethical and immoral argument, but we will make but one more quotation from it, the awful prophecy with which the essay concludes.

"When you see, as you inevitably will, the fruit of your folly, in your war on providential arrangements, and of your obstinate, blind resistance of God's plan for elevating these degraded beings, then will come the bitter memories of the counsels of statesmen and Christians rejected, of warnings despised, the name of God and his doctrine blasphemed,' vain regrets for the best blood of the country poured forth like water, and for the millions of treasure worse than wasted in fraternal strife. Awaking from the delusive dream of a hollow freedom, the figment of infidelity, you will find those chains which a false philanthropy had, in imagination, seen fettering the negro, in sad reality fastened upon your own limbs; the boasted liberty and equality which Abolition fanaticism had forced upon the slave turned into disastrous license and hopeless debasement; the country divided, ruined,—the scorn, the sport, and the prey of foreign powers; your own freedom a glittering shadow of the past, and your necks in the dust under the iron heel of military rule. This is the dark programme for a day of fasting and repentance, when

Abolitionism has done its work, and God shall write the doom of the country in letters of blood, for the warning of the world: THIS IS THE NATION THAT PROUDLY DARED TO DEFY MY WISDOM, AND CALL MY ORDINANCES SIN!"

Anything that we could add would but weaken the force of this tremendous conclusion. A prophet like Professor Morse cannot be very miserable. There is scarcely a position more flattering to the self-conceit of a weak man, than that of a prophesier laughed at by the community, but supported in his self-assumed character by the applause of a small coterie of individuals feeble as himself. He consoles himself for the general neglect by an appeal to the future. If the progress of events contradict his predictions, he is ready with new prophecies of woe. But it is an unsafe thing to invoke the future in support of wrong, and to claim God as on the side of inhumanity.

Already the Society for the Diffusion of Political Information is exanimate, though not extinct, and its pleas for slavery and State rights are ready to be labelled and put away among the - curiosities of the past, mere shameful memorials of political and moral error. Its character and brief course remind one of Burke's famous figure of the grasshoppers. "Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, it is not to be imagined that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour."

It will very soon be unprofitable for any political party, however unscrupulous, to undertake the patronage of slavery. The current of freedom is setting southward with such force as to sweep away all the puny obstacles with which craft or selfishness may endeavor to stem its course. From the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from Maryland to Missouri and Louisiana, through all the Border States, and through those districts exempted from the application of the proclamation of emancipation, a determination prevails, and is every day gathering new

and irresistible strength, that slavery shall cease. The lessons of the war have not been lost upon those who have experienced its sufferings and sorrows. They see that the Union cannot be restored as long as slavery exists; that union and freedom are inseparable, and that one is not to be had without the other. And this spirit is not confined to the Border States. As our armies advance, and the former Slave States are gradually once more brought into subjection to the power of the nation, the same spirit will manifest itself among their people. Already the chief obstacle to a speedy and firm reconstruction of the Union is shattered. Liberty is the bond of a new and indissoluble union, the foundation of a true nationality.

For, whatever theories of reconstruction be proposed, whatever perplexities of administration may accompany the new order of things, whatever difficulties may attend the return of the seceded States to the privileges and the peace of the Union, the great question that underlies all others, and by the solution of which other questions are rendered easy to solve, is already settled. No State comes back with slavery to the Union. The nation, acting by the President, has emancipated the slaves; liberty has been promised to them, and "the promise, having been made, must be kept." But more than this, the nation, thinking, speaking, acting for itself, has resolved that henceforth all men within its borders shall be free and equal in the possession of their inalienable rights; and these rights it will maintain at any cost against those who deny or impugn them.

When peace shall thus be restored, and settled upon that foundation of justice which will render it secure and immutable, the sophistries and the immoralities of the defenders of slavery will sink into the oblivion they deserve. Then we may hope for a nobler code of political morals, for truer conceptions of the nature of the American Constitution, and for heartier and more faithful devotion to the principles from which our institutions derive their worth, their power, and their endurance.