of Representatives, where relative population
was the basis of election, the South fought its
battles in the senate, because there the balance
of parties was proportioned to the relative
number of the states.

It is this fact which gave all its political interest
to the slave question. The numbers of the
free and of the slave states being about equal,
the question of free or slave, in admission of a
new state or territory to the Union, was a question
of political power between North and South,
where, as we shall see presently, commercial
interests of the two sides were opposed on many
points of moment, and each sought power to
make the laws in its own favour. This
consideration alone gave its importance to the
question that arose when Missouri applied for
admission to the Union, The literal question of
slave labour in Missouri hardly entered into
any man's thought. The land in Missouri is
not very suitable, and was not required, for more
plantations; it was a question of balance of
power between the men of two halves of a great
continent who had strongly divided views of
their own interests, but who were bound to
submit to one code of commercial policy. Each
half desired to have the making of that code, by
getting possession of the legislative and executive.
The South had lost the House of
Representatives, but had on its side, by uncertain
tenure, both the Senate and the President.
When the question of Missouri arose, a new
free state would have been fatal to the influence
of the South in the senate, a new slave state
was reassurance of its strength. Secession was
then threatened. But by compromise Missouri
was admitted as a slave state, with the understanding
that the latitude 36 deg. 30 sec. should
thenceforth be a boundary line as to this
question between South and North. The
discreditable annexation of Texas gave the South
further assurance of power, but this again led to
the Mexican war and extension of the Union
along the Pacific shores. Thereupon the
discovery of gold in California, as well as the Irish
famine, produced a new energy of free white
immigration.

The North, if it had not been divided into
its own factions, would now have been irresistible.
But use could be made of Northern faction
in the Southern interests. What are called
the Republicans of the North represent its
conservative and Protectionist party, which include
whatever is reckoned as the aristocracy. These
are opposed by the South, partly because they
represent the strength of the free states, partly
because they are protectionist where protection
is not to the interest of Southern trade. Against
the Republicans, therefore, the Southern party
has fought, and has been able often to prevail,
even in the House of Representatives, by coalition
with the Northern democrats. But in the
midst of all this painful balancing of interests
there came the last presidential election. Every
Northern state voted for Mr. Lincoln. Every
Southern state voted against him. Jefferson had
said long ago that "a geographical line, coinciding
with a marked principle, moral and political,
once conceived and held up to the angry passions
of men, will never be obliterated, and every
irritation will make it deeper and deeper."Here
was the geographical line distinctly chosen for
the demarcation of two rival interests. The
Northern States had one hundred and eighty-
three votes; the Southern one hundred and
twenty. The North had shown that it could
act in a mass and be irresistible as the stronger
half in ill-assorted union. Then the South, feeling
that within the Union the staff had finally gone
from its hands, determined to withdraw from a
federal compact that imposed on it a government
hostile in spirit and adverse in policy to its
commercial interest.

The North was not to blame for its triumph.
It had become simply impossible that one
government could satisfy both North and South.
Had the South in these days of strongly marked
antagonism dominated as completely over the
North as the North had at last shown itself able
to dominate over the South, there would have
been still the opposed armies of the Potomac,
the difference being that New York, and not
New Orleans, would be the chief town in
Secessia.

It has been the fault of living American statesmen
that they could not see when it was living
and large before their eyes, a political necessity
foreseen by the great founders of their constitution
as the probable issue of differences even
much less extreme than those which have been
created by the later sequence of events. How
little the actual extension of slavery was
concerned in the discussion whether a new territory
should be free or slave, is shown in the case of
New Mexico. This territory has been
organised more than ten years. It lies at the
extreme south, and adjoins a slave state; its soil
as well as its climate are suitable for slave labour;
it is open to slavery, which is protected there
by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Yet in ten years this region, four times as large
as England, has acquired a population of but
twenty-two slaves, and of these only twelve
are domiciled. And, urges MR. SPENCE (from
whose excellent recent book on the American
Union we draw much of our argument), in the
cry against New Mexican slavery, are we to
suppose that the conscience of the North is so
framed that it grieves over this poor dozen, at the
same time that it endures four millions close at
home?" That it endures, we may add, more
than three thousand in the district of Columbia
itself, the capital district of the Union, lying
unshielded by the constitution in the absolute
control of congress. But we may go on to
show more clearly that, hateful as all slavery is,
and most desirable above all things as is the
advent of the day when there shall be no more
slaves, white or black, a high moral consideration
of the evils of slavery on one side, and a highly
immoral determination to prolong them on the
other, is neither the root nor the fruit of the
deplorable war now raging in America. We
have dealt with the dry seeds of strife, let us