tutions, it could not be said that we had not the
right to offer freedom to its slaves. Objection might be made to
the proclamation of an offer of the kind, but it would be based on
expediency. England would not accept a plan that was formed half a
century ago for the partition of the United States, and which had for
its leading idea the proclamation of freedom to American slaves; but
her refusal was owing to the circumstance that she was herself a great
slaveholding power, and she had no thought of establishing a precedent
that might soon have been used with fatal effect against herself. She
did not close her ears to the proposition because she had any doubt
as to her right to avail herself of an offer of freedom to slaves,
or because she supposed that to make such an offer would be to act
immorally, but because it was inexpedient for her to proceed to
extremities with us, due regard being had to her own interests. Had
slavery been abolished in her dominions twenty years earlier, she would
have acted against American slavery in 1812-15, and probably with entire
success. President Lincoln does not purpose going so far as England
could have gone with perfect propriety. She could have proclaimed
freedom to American slaves without limitation. He has regard to the
character of the war that exists, and so his Proclamation is not threat,
but a warning. In substance, he tells the Rebels, that, if they shall
persist in their rebellion after a certain date, their slaves shall be
made free, if it shall be in his power to liberate them. He gives
them exactly one hundred days in which to make their election between
submission and slavery and resistance and ruin; and these hundred days
may become as noted in history as those Hundred Days which formed the
second reign of Napoleon I., as well through the consequences of the
action that shall mark their course as through the gravity of that
action itself.

Objections have been made to the time of issuing the Proclamation. Why,
it has been asked, spring it so suddenly upon the country? Why publish
it just as the tide of war was turning in our favor? Why not wait, and
see what the effect would be on the Southern mind of the victories won
in Maryland?--We have no knowledge of the immediate reasons that moved
the President to select the twenty-second of September for the date of
his Proclamation; but we can see three reasons why that day was a good
one for the deed which thereon was done.