ate such a necessity as likely to arise
for a considerable time.

With respect to the supply of arms, cannon, powder, and military
stores, the Confederates are under no alarm whatever. Augusta furnishes
more than sufficient gunpowder; Atlanta, copper caps, &c. The Tredegar
works at Richmond, and other foundries, cast more cannon than is wanted;
and the Federal generals have always hitherto proved themselves the most
indefatigable purveyors of artillery to the Confederate Government, for
even in those actions which they claim as drawn battles or as victories,
such as Corinth, Murfreesborough, and Gettysburg, they have never failed
to make over cannon to the Southerners without exacting any in return.

My Northern friends on board the China spoke much and earnestly about
the determination of the North to crush out the Rebellion at any
sacrifice. But they did not show any disposition to _fight themselves_
in this cause, although many of them would have made most eligible
recruits; and if they had been Southerners, their female relations would
have made them enter the army whether their inclinations led them that
way or not.

I do not mention this difference of spirit by way of making any odious
comparisons between North and South in this respect, because I feel sure
that these Northern gentlemen would emulate the example of their enemy
if they could foresee any danger of a Southern Butler exercising his
infamous sway over Philadelphia, or of a Confederate Milroy ruling with
intolerable despotism in Boston, by withholding the necessaries of life
from helpless women with one hand, whilst tendering them with the other
a hated and absurd oath of allegiance to a detested Government.

But the mass of respectable Northerners, though they may be willing to
pay, do not very naturally feel themselves called upon to give their
blood in a war of aggression, ambition, and conquest; for this war is
essentially a war of conquest. If ever a nation did wage such a war, the
North is now engaged, with a determination worthy of a more hopeful
cause, in endeavouring to conquer the South; but the more I think of all
that I have seen in the Confederate States of the devotion of the whole
population, the more I feel inclined to say with General Polk--"How can
you subjugate such a people as this?" and even supposing that their
extermination were a feasible plan, as some Northerners have suggested,
I never can believe that in the nineteenth cent