hority of the Union in the seceded States, they
would be resisted. "You may," he said, "under color of enforcing
your laws and collecting your revenue, blockade our ports. This
will be war, and we shall meet it with different but equally
efficient weapons. We will not permit the consumption or introduction
of any of your manufactures. Every sea will swarm with our
privateers, the volunteer militia of the ocean." He confidently
expected foreign aid. "How long," he asked, "will the great naval
powers of Europe permit you to impede their free intercourse with
their best customers, and to stop the supply of the great staple
which is the most important basis of their manufacturing industry?"
"You were," said he, adding taunt to argument, "with all the wealth
of this once great confederacy, but a fourth or fifth rate naval
power. What will you be when emasculated by the withdrawal of
fifteen States, and warred upon by them with active and inveterate
hostility?"

In a tone of patronizing liberality, Mr. Slidell gave assurance
that the new confederacy would recognize the rights of the inhabitants
of the valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries to free
navigation, and would guarantee to them "a free interchange of
agricultural production without impost, and the free transit from
foreign countries of every species of merchandise, subjected only
to such regulations as may be necessary for a protection of the
revenue system which we may establish." Had Mr. Slidell been less
inspired by insolence, and more largely endowed with wisdom, he
would have remembered that when the Union contained but six millions
of people, they were willing to fight any one of three great European
powers for freedom of access to the sea for the inhabitants of the
valley of the Mississippi, and that it was from the first a physical
impossibility to close it or in any way restrict it against the
rights of the North-West. The people of that section, even without
the prestige of the national flag, were immeasurably stronger than
the people of the South-West, and were, unaided, fully competent
to fight their way to the ocean over any obstacles which the powers
behind Mr. Slidell could interpose. In the mere matching of local
strength, it was sheer folly for the States of the lower Mississippi
to attempt to control the mouth of that river.

SPEECHES OF BENJAMIN AND SLIDELL.

Mr. Judah P. Benjamin spoke