o, east of the mountains, at least. He had seen
whole groups of estates, populous in his time, lapse into waste. He
had seen agriculture exchanged for human stock-breeding; and he
keenly felt the degradation.

'The forest was returning over the fine old estates, and the wild
creatures which had not been seen for generations were reaeppearing,
numbers and wealth were declining, and education and manners were
degenerating. It would not have surprised him to be told that on
that soil would the main battles be fought when the critical day
should come which he foresaw.

'To Mr. Madison despair was not easy. He had a cheerful and
sanguine temper, and if there was one thing rather than another
which he had learned to consider secure, it was the Constitution
which he had so large a share in making. Yet he told me that he was
nearly in despair, and that he had been quite so till the
Colonization Society arose.

'Rather than admit to himself that the South must be laid waste by
a servile war, or the whole country by a civil war, he strove to
believe that millions of negroes could be carried to Africa, and so
got rid of. I need not speak of the weakness of such a hope. What
concerns us now is that he saw and described to me, when I was his
guest, the dangers and horrors of the state of society in which he
was living.

'He talked more of slavery than of all other subjects together,
returning to it morning, noon, and night. He said that the clergy
perverted the Bible because it was altogether against slavery; that
the colored population was increasing faster than the white; and
that the state of morals was such as barely permitted society to
exist.

'Of the issue of the conflict, whenever it should occur, there
could, he said, be no doubt. A society burdened with a slave system
could make no permanent resistance to an unencumbered enemy; and he
was astonished at the fanaticism which blinded some Southern men to
so clear a certainty.

'Such was Mr. Madison's opinion in 1855.'

But the trial has come at last, and it is for the country to decide
whether the South is to be allowed to secede, or to remain strengthened
by their slaves, planting and warring against us until our own resources
becoming exhausted, Europe can at an opportune moment intervene. But
will