appears that they said: "It was from no fear that the Slaves
would be liberated, that Secession took place. The very Party in power
has proposed to guarantee Slavery forever in the States, if the South
would but remain in the Union." On the 4th of May preceding, Lord John
had received these Commissioners at his house; and in a letter of
May 11, 1861, wrote, from the Foreign Office, to Lord Lyons, the British
Minister at Washington, a letter, in which, alluding to his informal
communication with them, he said: "One of these gentlemen, speaking for
the others, dilated on the causes which had induced the Southern States
to Secede from the Northern. The principal of these causes, he said,
was not Slavery, but the very high price which, for the sake of
Protecting the Northern manufacturers, the South were obliged to pay for
the manufactured goods which they required. One of the first acts of
the Southern Congress was to reduce these duties, and to prove their
sincerity he gave as an instance that Louisiana had given up altogether
that Protection on her sugar which she enjoyed by the legislation of the
United States. As a proof of the riches of the South. He stated that
of $350,000,000 of exports of produce to foreign countries $270,000,000
were furnished by the Southern States." * * * They pointed to the new
Tariff of the United States as a proof that British manufactures would
be nearly excluded from the North, and freely admitted in the South.

This may be as good a place as any other to say a few words touching
another alleged "cause" of Secession. During the exciting period just
prior to the breaking out of the great War of the Rebellion, the
Slave-holding and Secession-nursing States of the South, made a terrible
hubbub over the Personal Liberty Bills of the Northern States. And when
Secession came, many people of the North supposed these Bills to be the
prime, if not the only real cause of it. Not so. They constituted, as
we now know, only a part of the mere pretext. But, none the less, they
constituted a portion of the history of that eventful time, and cannot
be altogether ignored.

In order then, that the reader may quickly grasp, not only the general
nature, but also the most important details of the Personal Liberty
Bills (in force, in 1860, in many of the Free States) so frequently
alluded to in the Debates of Congress, in speeches on the stump, and in
the fulminations of Seceding States and their