eir stumbling brethren of the South, the
catastrophe is but deferred, not avoided. Out of the Union, the more
extreme Southern States--those in which King Cotton has already firmly
established his dynasty--are, if we may judge by passing events, ripe
for the result. The more Northern have yet a reprieve of fate, as having
not yet wholly forgotten the lessons of their origin. The result,
however, be it delayed for one year or for one hundred years, can hardly
admit of doubt. The emergency which is to try their system may not arise
for many years; but passing events warn us that it maybe upon them now.
The most philosophical of modern French historians, in describing the
latter days of the Roman Empire, tells us that "the higher classes of
a nation can communicate virtue and wisdom to the government, if they
themselves are virtuous and wise: but they can never give it strength;
for strength always comes from below; it always proceeds from the
masses." The Cotton dynasty pretends not only to maintain a government
where the masses are slaves, but a republican government where the vast
majority of the higher classes are ignorant. On the intelligence of the
mass of the whites the South must rely for its republican permanence, as
on their arms it must rely for its force; and here again, the words of
Sismondi, written of falling Rome, seem already applicable to the South:
--"Thus all that class of free cultivators, who more than any other
class feel the love of country, who could defend the soil, and who ought
to furnish the best soldiers, disappeared almost entirely. The number
of small farmers diminished to such a degree, that a rich man, a man of
noble family, had often to travel more than ten leagues before falling
in with an equal or a neighbor." The destruction of the republican form
of government is, then, almost the necessary catastrophe; but what will
follow that catastrophe it is not so easy to foretell. The Republic,
thus undermined, will fall; but what shall supply its place? The
tendency of decaying republics is to anarchy; and men take refuge from
the terrors of anarchy in despotism. The South least of all can indulge
in anarchy, as it would at once tend to servile insurrection. They
cannot long be torn by civil war, for the same reason. The ever-present,
all-pervading fear of the African must force them into some government,
and the stronger the better. The social divisions of the South, into the
rich and educated