that he is perfectly consistent with himself in thinking
both that the abstract right of insurrection existed in the case of the
Southern States of the Union and the abstract right of repression in the
Federal Government, and also that this particular insurrection deserved
condemnation and failure, and this particular repression deserved
credit and triumph,--a triumph which, when the "Mights of Men" had been
sufficiently tested, it very arduously and very conclusively managed to
achieve.

As to the question of a _legal and constitutional_ right of secession,
the writer has not the impudence to express--and scarcely to
entertain--an opinion. That is a question for American lawyers and
publicists to discuss and determine; the obfuscated British mind being
entitled to affirm only this: that there seems to have been something to
say on the Southern side of the question, as well as a good deal on the
Northern. The writer apprehends that the abstract right of insurrection
on the one hand, and of self-conservation on the other, quite overbears,
in so vast and momentous a debate, the narrow, technical, legal
question: that which it does not overbear is the rightness or wrongness
of the immediate motive, conduct, and aim of any particular insurrection
and repression, considered individually. The abstract rights remain the
same in all cases; the application of those rights differs immeasurably,
according to the merits of each several case.

What were the merits of this particular case? The constitutional
majority of the whole nation had elected a President whose election was
held by both parties to be tantamount to the policy of non-extension of
slavery into the Territories of the Republic, and into all States to be
thereafter constructed; and before the President elect had entered upon
his functions, before a single subsisting legal right (which might or
might not be a moral wrong) had been interfered with, while there was
yet no ground for affirming that any such right would ever be interfered
with, the Southern States declared that their minority was of more
weight than the nation's majority, that they would break up the nation
rather than abide by its award, and would themselves constitute a new
nation, founded on the maintenance of slavery within their own borders,
and its extension and propagation as opportunity might offer. This, and
not the mere fact that they were secessionists, insurgents, rebels, or
whatever harder t