erm may be forthcoming, is the reason why the writer
disliked the revolt of the Southern States, and wished it to come to
nought; and corresponding facts regarding the Northern States,--that
they were simply upholding a constitutional act performed by the nation
at large, were contending for the majestic present and the magnificent
future of a great and free republic, were arrayed against the extension
of slavery, and might, by the force of circumstances and the growth of
ideas, find themselves called up even to exterminate the existing
slave-system,--these were the facts which commanded his homage to the
Northern cause,--not merely that they were the assertors of authority
against innovation. The case, as the writer understands it, amounts
simply to this: that the South seceded before it had been in any degree
damnified, and to maintain a system the scotching or killing of which,
though not in fact then contemplated by the North to any extent contrary
to existing laws, would have been a benefit to mankind and an atonement
to human conscience. It may perhaps seem superfluous or impertinent to
have given so many words to the statement of opinions so simple and
obvious. But the English Liberal adherents of the Northern States were
continually twitted with their assumed inconsistency in censuring the
insurrection of the South, while they approved of (for instance) the
insurrection of Lombardy against the Austrians; and it seemed impossible
to get the objectors to understand, or at any rate to acknowledge, that
motives, aims, and consequences have some bearing upon revolts, as upon
other transactions, and that one may consistently abhor a revolt the
motive and aim of which he believes to be bad, while he sympathizes with
another the motive and aim of which he believes to be good. Of course,
too, there were other objectors who denied, and will to this day not
blush to deny, that the question of Slavery was the real substantial
incentive to secession, and who paraded the minor questions of tariffs,
the conflicting interests of the productive and the manufacturing
States, and the like. These arguments the writer leaves unfingered; it
is no business of his to fray their delicate texture. All he has to say
of them here is, that, as he does not value them at a pin's fee as
representing the main point at issue, they in no way affected the
feelings which he entertained concerning the war. Again, there were
remonstrants of a still mor