nce over the result. From the
sketch of the history of slavery which was furnished us by our
correspondent in New York last week, we learn that at the time of the
American Revolution slavery existed in every State in the Union except
Massachusetts; but we also learn that the great men who directed that
revolution--Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Patrick Henry, and
Hamilton--were unanimous in execrating the practice of slavery, and looked
forward to the time when it would cease to contaminate the soil of free
America. The abolition of the slave trade, which subsequently followed,
was regarded by its warmest advocates as not only beneficial in itself,
but as a long step towards the extinction of slavery altogether, it was
not foreseen that certain free and democratic communities would arise
which would apply themselves to the honourable office of breeding slaves,
to be consumed on the free and democratic plantations of the South, and of
thus replacing the African slave trade by an internal traffic in human
flesh, carried on under circumstances of almost equal atrocity through the
heart of a free and democratic nation. Democracy has verily a strong
digestion, and one not to be interfered with by trifles.

"But the most melancholy part of the matter is, that during the seventy
years for which the American confederacy has existed, the whole tone of
sentiment with regard to slavery has, in the Southern States at least,
undergone a remarkable change. Slavery used to be treated as a thoroughly
exceptional institution--as an evil legacy of evil times--as a disgrace to
a constitution founded on the natural freedom and independence of mankind.
There was hardly a political leader of any note who had not some plan for
its abolition. Jefferson himself, the greatest chief of the democracy, had
in the early part of this century speculated deeply on the subject; but
the United States became possessed of Louisiana and Florida, they have
conquered Texas, they have made Arkansas and Missouri into States; and
these successive acquisitions have altered entirely the view with which
slavery is regarded. Perhaps as much as anything, from the long license
enjoyed by the editors of the South of writing what they pleased in favour
of slavery, with the absolute certainty that no one would be found bold
enough to write anything on the other side, and thus make himself a mark
for popular vengeance, the subject has come to be written on in a tone of
fe