essentially a wheat-growing and a pasture country, and neither its soil, its position, nor its products make it a desirable country for the slaveholder. For overthrowing the Missouri Compromise and for striving to introduce slavery into Kansas, the South had but one motive, and that motive was to complete its own victory over the North, and utterly to achieve its old project of reversing the character of the American Republic. It was an act of deliberate aggression upon the Free States. And the first aggression of the Bill was followed up closely by the violent and outrageous invasion of the territory of Kansas from Missouri, by the violent and outrageous seizure of the ballot boxes, about which the people of Kansas had assembled to elect their territorial Legislature, and by the violent and outrageous establishment of a Legislature illegally chosen. From the first to the last the conduct of the South in respect to Kansas has been aggressive, insolent, overbearing. The people of Kansas have been treated by the Southern States, and by the American President, who is merely a tool of the Southern party, precisely as if they were a population of rebels. When the Congressional Committee charged to inquire into the Kansas affair appeared before the President to represent the distressed and endangered state of the settlers, that personage made them a reply which we hope no American will ever forget, a reply which shows more distinctly than pages of eloquent reprobation could, to what a degree of degradation the oligarchic rule of the South has brought the American Executive. There would have been no trouble in Kansas,' said this successor of Washington, 'had the people been more anxious for peace and less concerned about their institutions!' What, indeed, are the United States coming to, when they have already come to this! To anything much worse than this they cannot very well come; and we choose to hope that they are coming to something a great deal better.

We do not believe the seventeen millions of the North to be so pusillanimous that they will tamely submit to the insolent dictation which has now thrown off all disguise, and

boldly signs them to its feet. We do not believe the seventeen millions of the North to be so perverted by prosperity, so corrupted with materialism, so false to all the great ideas of their great ancestors, as to be prepared to acquiesce in the triumph of slavery, to defile the sacred shrine of liberty, to dethrone justice in the Republic, and to deify brute force. We cannot indeed help seeing that the poison taint has entered into the Northern life; we read with sorrow and concern of Northern men who publicly pronounce the Declaration of Independence to have been an extravagance; and we hardly know whether to feel indignation or contempt for the Northern men of mature years and decent understanding who can assemble now to deprecate the formation of geographical parties,' as if a party organised to oppose the extension of slavery could help being a geographical party.' Still, we do not, we will not despair of the great Republic. We cannot believe that Providence will permit the 'madness and violence of a few' to throw away the magnificent future which seemed opening so brightly upon the United States. We will hope that the wiseacres will soon be silenced by the great voice of the Northern people uniting to prevent the collisions of civil war, or the worse catastrophe-both for the South and the North-of an assured Southern domination, by a resolute exhibition of that overwhelming strength which God assuredly has not given to them in vain. We look with anxiety for the results of the pending election in America; for though the choice of President now made cannot, of course, be followed by the immediate settlement of the mighty question at issue, yet it will go far towards contributing to that result by vindicating the intention of the Northern States to do their duty. Personally, Colonel Fremont would seem to be quite the man of the hour for America. Young, brave, resolute, intelligent, and, above all, honest and manly in his love of freedom, he would seem peculiarly fitted to execute the deliberate will of a free people, and quietly but firmly to coerce into reason and

1856.]

rule an overbearing, irrational, and violent minority. If, on the other hand, the destinies of the United States be surrendered on the 4th of November from the hands of Mr. Pierce into those of a successor like unto himself (and such a successor Mr. Buchanan will certainly be in respect to his public policy), who shall dare cast the horoscope of our Transatlantic kinsmen?

But we will not even suggest the possibility of an evil issue for the nation which began so well. We will keep our hopes of America bright, and keep warm our faith in the virtue, the moral force, the will of those mighty free States upon whom God has laid it to save, not themselves alone from Southern dominion, but the foolish and passionate South also from the deadly domination of its own senseless, barbarous, and wicked spirit.

NOTE. Since this paper was printed we have found in a Canadian journal the following résumé of Southern opinions on the subject of slave labour and its extension; which we cannot withhold from our readers, so remarkable a confirmation does it lend to all that we have said of the Southern spirit and the Southern policy in America:—

THE NEW DEMOCRATIC'

DOCTRINE.

Slavery not to be confined to the Negro race, but to be made the universal condition of the labouring classes of society.

Not many years ago the Southern slaveholders were contented to have their human chattels' protected in the States where they held them.

Next, they demanded and secured five Slave States from acquired territory (La., Fla., Ark., Mo., and Texas), while the Free States have only secured two-Iowa and California.

Next, the Slave power demanded all the territories, and broke down the Missouri Compromise, which secured a part of those territories to free labour.

Next, they demanded the right to come into the Free States with their slaves whenever they choose and stay as long as they please; and the United States Courts seem about to yield to them, and grant this outrageous demand.

But the last, the crowning, the diabolical assumption is, that Slavery is not to be confined to the NEGRO RACE,

621

То

The Richmond Examiner, one of the leading Democratic papers in Virginia, ardently supporting Mr. Buchanan, holds the following language in a late issue:

'Until recently, the defence of slavery has laboured under great difficulties, because its apologists (for they were mere apologists) took half-way grounds. They confined the defence of slavery to mere Negro slavery is right natural and neces sary, and does not depend upon difference of COMPLEXION. The laws of the Slave States justify the holding of WHITE MEN in bondage.'

Another Buchanan paper, the leading one in South Carolina, says :

'Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the labouring man, whether WHITE or black.-The great evil of Northern free society is, that it is burdened with a servile class of MECHANICS and LABOURERS, unfit for self-government, and yet clothed with the attributes and powers of citizens. Master and slave is a relation in society as necessary as that of parent and child; and the Northern States will yet have to introduce it. Their theory of free government is a delusion.'

There's Democratic' doctrine for you, with a vengeance; our theory of free government a delusion'-'labouring men, whether white or black, to be slaves.' Verily, matters are coming to a pretty The Richmond (Va.) pass with us. Enquirer, Mr. Buchanan's confidential organ, and considered by the Democratic' party as its ablest paper in the South, speaks as follows, in a recent number:

'Repeatedly have we asked the North, 'Has not the experiment of universal Are not the evils liberty FAILED? of FREE SOCIETY INSUFFERABLE? And do not most thinking men among you propose to subvert and reconstruct it?' Still no answer. gloomy silence is another conclusive proof, added to many other conclusive evidences we have furnished, that free

This

society in the long run is an impracticable form of society; it is everywhere starving, demoralized, and insurrectionary. We repeat, then, that policy and humanity alike forbid the extension of the evils of free society to new people and coming generations. Two opposite forms of society cannot, among civilized men, coexist and endure. The one must give way and cease to exist-the other become universal. If free society be unnatural, immoral, and unchristian, it must fall, and give way to slave society -a social system old as the world, universal as man.'

name.

And the Muscogee (Ala.) Herald, another valiant Buchanan organ, says: Free Society! we sicken of the What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operators, small fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen... This is your free society which the Northern hordes are endeavouring to extend into Kansas.'

And the South Side Democrat, another prominent Buchanan paper, in Virginia, whose editor was supported for Clerk of the House of Representatives by the Democratic members of the present Congress-T. J. D. Fuller, of Maine, among them-abuses everything free after this style :—

We have got to hating everything with the prefix free, from free negroes down and up through the whole catalogue-free farms, free labour, free society, free will, free thinking, free children, and free schools-all belonging to the same brood of damnable isms. But the worst of all these abominations is the modern system of free schools. The New England system of free schools has been the cause and prolific source of the infidelities and treasons that have turned her cities into Sodoms and Gomorrahs, and her land into the common nestling-places of howling Bedlamites. We abominate the system, because the schools are free.'

The Charleston (S. C.) Standard, another Democratic paper, in defending the murderer Herbert (the Democratic Congressman), who shot the poor Irish waiter, says:—

If white men accept the offices of menials, it should be expected that they will do so with an apprehension of their relation to society, and the disposition quietly to encounter both the responsibilities and liabilities which the relation imposes.'

The Alabama Mail, in commenting on the same, says:

'It is getting time that waiters at the North were convinced that they are servants, and not 'gentlemen' in disguise. We hope this Herbert affair will teach them prudence.'

So much for extracts from 'Democratic' newspapers. Now for a few from Democratic speeches. S. W. Downs, late Democratic Senator from Louisiana, in an elaborate and carefullyprepared speech, published in the Washington Globe, says:—

'I call upon the opponents of slavery to prove that the white labourers of the North are as happy, as contented, or as comfortable, as the slave of the South. In the South the slaves do not suffer one-tenth of the evils endured by the white labourers of the North. Poverty is unknown to the Southern slave, for as soon as the master of slaves becomes too poor to provide for them, he sells them to others who can take care of them. This, sir, is one of the excellences of the system of slavery, and this the superior condition of the Southern slave over the Northern white labourer.'

According to Mr. Downs (then good Democratic authority), all that the Northern white labourer requires is somebody to sell him when he falls into poverty. Admirable philanthropy !beautiful Democracy!! Senator Clemens, of Alabama, declared, in the U.S. Senate, that the operatives of New England were not as well situated nor as comfortably off as the slaves that cultivate the rice and cotton-fields of the South. In a recent speech by Mr. Reynolds, Pierce-Buchanan- Democratic candidate for Congress from Missouri, that gentleman distinctly asserted that 'The same construction of the power of Congress to exclude slavery from a United States Territory, would justify the Government in including foreignborn citizens-Germans and Irish as well as niggers!'

These extracts are not taken from obscure prints or obscure men. They are from the active, influential papers and influential men who lead the Demo

cratic party. It is for the free and intelligent mechanics and farmers and labourers of Maine (and they comprise nearly the whole population) to decide whether they will co-operate with a party whose leading spirits thus condemn their honourable callings, and brand them with every opprobrious epithet. Kennebec Journal.

THE

title of this article looks some. what unpromising. It may lead you, kind reader, to expect one of those sound, ponderous moral treatises which edified our grandfathers, and remind us of heavy dumpling without sweetmeats or suet; or it may call to your recollection a sermon on a special occasion preached from a University pulpit; or it may lead you to say, Here we have a rejected University Essay, only a few shades better than the one which carried off the prize.' The truth is, we have to redeem our character as an essayist from a charge of levity and unfairness; and we have chosen an important social subject on which to display our casuistical powers. Some time ago we had the privilege of writing for Fraser An Essay on Humbug,' -a commodity which is

said to abound in our factories and warehouses, and to be at all times marketable in the Manchester Exchange. Not long after Mr. Shufflebotham, to whom allusion had been made, met us in the street, and declared that we were in ourselves the best illustration of the subject. Now Shufflebotham has a pleasant house in the country, and wines of rare vintages, and handsome daughters who have received a genteel boarding-school education:Naturally, therefore, we wish to propitiate our friend by selecting a subject as far removed as possible from all personal considerations. Popularity! who associates this article with the metropolis of cotton? Does popularity hover round bombazines in the piece? Does it associate with madapollams? Can you extract it out of corduroys as the philosopher promised to extract moonshine out of melons? And if

VOL. LIV. NO. CCCXXIV.

there is nothing in the title of our essay at which Shufflebotham can take offence, he cannot, we are confident, say, as in a former instance, that we are ourselves the best illustration of our subject.

And yet there is a family likeness between popularity and humbug. There is a sort of moral affinity between them. Their colours often blend very pleasingly together, and melt into each other like the tints of the rainbow or the coruscations of the aurora borealis. Still they are not identical. Humbug is expressive of a more generic idea; it diffuses itself over a very large portion of rational creation; it is a sort of self-inoculator throughout human society. Popularity-alas! that we should have to write it-is often a species or a correlative of humbug: it is one of the pimples and eruptions produced by the inoculating matter. What the great Stagyrite says of the relative sciences of rhetoric and dialectics, is true of popu larity and humbug-the one is a sort of offshoot of the other; they grow up side by side; ὥστε συμβαίνει τὴν ̔Ρητορικὴν οἷον παραφυές τι τῆς Διαλεκτικῆς εἶναι.*

But to begin with the beginning -to commence, after the dialectic fashion, with the definition-What is the nature of Popularity? Let it be laid down to be a species of reputation.' But reputations are of various kinds: some are lasting, while others are short-lived; some are based on a solid foundation, while others have none whatever. How is it with Popularity? Can it be styled a reputation that springs out of a real cause, and will endure? This must be regarded as fame. Would any one speak of the

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