ses of
Secessia to the hardship of their position and its causes? Their
ignorance has been trifled with by men who cover treasonable designs
with a pretence of local patriotism. Neither they nor their misleaders
have any true conception of the people of the Free States, of those
"white slaves" who in Massachusetts alone have a deposit in the Savings
Banks whose yearly interest would pay seven times over the four hundred
thousand dollars which South Carolina cannot raise.

But even if we leave other practical difficulties out of sight, what
chance of stability is there for a confederacy whose very foundation is
the principle that any member of it may withdraw at the first
discontent? If they could contrive to establish a free trade treaty
with their chief customer, England, would she consent to gratify
Louisiana with an exception in favor of sugar? Some of the leaders of
the secession movement have already become aware of this difficulty,
and accordingly propose the abolition of all State lines,--the first
step toward a military despotism; for, if our present system have one
advantage greater than another, it is the neutralization of numberless
individual ambitions by adequate opportunities of provincial
distinction. Even now the merits of the Napoleonic system are put
forward by some of the theorists of Alabama and Mississippi, who
doubtless have as good a stomach to be emperors as ever Bottom had to a
bottle of hay, when his head was temporarily transformed to the
likeness of theirs,--and who, were they subjects of the government that
looks so nice across the Atlantic, would, ere this, have been on their
way to Cayenne, a spot where such red-peppery temperaments would find
themselves at home.

The absurdities with which the telegraphic column of the newspapers has
been daily crowded, since the vagaries of South Carolina finally
settled down into unmistakable insanity, would give us but a poor
opinion of the general intelligence of the country, did we not know
that they were due to the necessities of "Our Own Correspondent." At
one time, it is Fort Sumter that is to be bombarded with floating
batteries mounted on rafts behind a rampart of cotton-bales; at
another, it is Mr. Barrett, Mayor of Washington, announcing his
intention that the President-elect shall be inaugurated, or Mr.
Buchanan declaring that he shall cheerfully assent to it. Indeed! and
who gave them any choice in the matter? Yesterday, it was General Sco