we It must be a shifting line, because with every new addition of territory a new division must be made. Should the line be drawn through New Mexico, and a portion of that territory given up to the South, and the division regarded as an equitable one, no sooner then shall we have added Cuba, or, by cession from Mexico, the countries south of Texas, the line has ceased to be equitable and must be moved farther south. We need not speak now of Canada, though it is easy to see how the addition of the two Canadian States, with the vast territories attached to them, would rouse the jealousy of the South, who would then demand a re-adjustment of the line, were its position unsettled, or if not, then the purchase of more territory to maintain the balance on their side. tempt a direct legislative action, establishing slavery where it is interdicted, both by nature and by circumstance. He says that if slavery be interdicted north of the line, the South will have gained nothing, unless it be established by the same act, south of the line; but that is an impossibility there could not be twenty votes got in favor of it. It has been said, he continues, that non-legislation on this point, in regard to California, implies the same thing as the exclusion of slavery from that region. "That," says Mr. Clay, cannot help that, Congress is not reproachable for. If nature has pronounced the doom of slavery upon those territories -if she has declared, by her immutable laws, that slavery cannot and shall not be introduced there, whom can you reproach but nature, or nature's God? Congress we cannot ;-Congress abstains;-Congress is passive-Congress is non-active in the plan which proposes to extend no line; leaves the entire theatre of these territories untouched by legislative enactment, either to exclude or admit slavery." "I ask again," he continues, "if you will listen to the voice of calm and dispassionate reason, -I ask of any man from the South to rise and tell me, if it is not better for his section of the Union that Congress should remain passive, on both sides of any ideal line, than that it should interdict slavery on one side of the line, and be passive in regard to it on the other side of the line?" A compromise line adopted by resolution, is an act equivalent to the establishment of a fundamental law. Though it be not an act in a strictly legal sense, it is a something more than an act; it is more effectual, because it is irreversible, irrevocable, and cannot be repealed. It is a resignation, or rather a division, of the highest function, that of sovereignty over persons, by a mere majority, between two sec-ware, in Maryland, in Virginia, in Tennestions of the nation. We say, therefore, it is equivalent to a fundamental law, and in so far as it has any effects whatever, must have the effects of such a law. A line of compromise, to be an equitable line, should be a shifting line; nor should it be a parallel of latitude, as it is a division of property,-nay, more, a division of sovereignty; it must be drawn, if justly, with regard not merely to the extent but the probable value of the territory so divided. But the adoption of such a line implies an idea, false, and contrary to nature, of the causes of this great controversy. The people of the North, looking upon slavery merely as a form of government, and which might be erected upon any soil and in any climate, have placed too little confidence in nature and necessity. They have not considered that slavery cannot be carried out over the prairies of the West, or into the defiles of the Rocky Mountains. The growers of cotton, of tobacco, of rice, and of sugar, seek out such fields as are suitable to the products which they cultivate; and these are the only products to which slave labor can be profitably applied; there is a limit to this institution, beyond which if it is attempted to be forced, as it has been in some parts of the continent, it is depressed and extinguished by the slow but certain operation of natural laws. Such was the fate of slavery in Connecticut, in New York, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, and such, beyond all reasonable doubt, must be its fate in Dela see, in Kentucky, and in Missouri. The negro laborer thrives in climates where the white laborer perishes; negro labor is not profitable excepting under circumstances peculiarly favorable; the crop must be one of four kinds, already mentioned; for though maize and other grains are largely cultivated at the South, they are not counted among the great sources of wealth: were corn to be the only export of the South, her wealth might be soon counted. The fixing, therefore, of a line of compromise | would be, in another sense of the word, a compromise of the laws of nature. Were the line so drawn as to embrace countries in which negro labor is unprofitable, the institution of slavery would be forced out upon territories wholly unfitted to receive it-territories like New Mexico and California, where the labor of white men, artizans and tillers of the soil, is not only possible but profitable. Governments have a weighty responsibility in directing the course of the emigrant; in preparing the way for him; in showing him to what lands, to what waters he should repair,-in preserving him from the rapacity of speculators, and from the disastrous effects of his own ignorance. But it is perhaps all in vain to speak of these things in this age of "individual enterprise." Governments have now only to bury the dead, if we accept the tenets of a certain school. Visions of colonial prosperity are dashed by the experience of a single man; if one man cannot make wheat grow in the deserts, a thousand never will; if rice and sugar abhor the climate of New Mexico, if cotton refuses to be profitable there, the South will storm and legislate to little purpose. The master may take his slaves into a new region, to contend there with new difficulties, but it were far better for him to give them a new discipline, to give a new direction to their energies at home, than to follow a dream. But when the madness of the private man is stimulated by legislation, when he is gravely sent to his ruin by Senates and Houses of Assembly, then comes calamity indeed; and the State buries her citizens in the wilderness, she buries her treasures there, something better than gold, the spirit and the energy of young adventure. And what is the origin of this monstrous procedure? this attempt to force out the institution of slavery upon soils unfitted to sustain it? To maintain what? The BALANCE of POWER! There are now fifteen against fifteen. California, New Mexico, the coming States of Oregon and Minesota, and perhaps the two Canadas, will turn the scale; and then, what becomes of your Balance of Power? We have admitted Texas; we are bound, therefore, by obligations as solemn as oaths, to admit California. When the Canadas offer, we must accept them too; Minesota and Oregon will have to be received; with decency we cannot refuse them. At best, we can only defer and procrastinate; they must come in; they are knocking at the door, and if we, the door-keepers, refuse them entrance, the nation will, without much controversy, elect new door-keepers more hospitable than we. Balance of Power!-who holds it? Who is it that wedges in this detestable delusion between the Northern and Southern sides of this body of one soul and one life? The States of Europe, existing in a condition of perpetual hatred and alarm, held together by no principle of right, no declaration of liberty, but if at all, by temporary and interested alliances, confessions of mutual weakness or wickedness; their governments, the prize of every military adventurer; the system itself a chaos, changeful as rolling smoke clouds, which assume every instant a new figure and position; to-day, a monarchy, and the affiliation of monarchies; to-morrow a revolution, a demagogue changing swiftly into a despot, and then an expansive and soon collapsing empire, in such a chaos, what can England do for herself, but maintain a BALANCE of POWER? England holds the Balance of Power for Europe; wisely and prudently for the most part, with a clear head, and an unflinching resolution, she watches the contending powers of the continent, and, when the scale turns to her own disadvantage, hurls in her cannon and her ships to make the balance again even. England holds the Balance of Power for Europe; but who holds it here? There is no analogy. America contemns, denies and denounces this doctrine of divisions. Late in the day we have this new delusion of a Balance of Power, sprung upon us by the State of South Carolina. Is she the third party, forsooth, between the Northern and the Southern halves of this great empire, of this nation of twenty millions, absorbing a continent, and holding the destinies of arts, arms and commerce in her hopeful future? In the closing remarks of his speech, Mr. Clay alludes, with great force, to the consequences of a dissolution of the Union, or to a cecession from it, of any portion of the slave States. Were the Union dissolved, it would be no remedy nor redress of grievances for the South; the territories would not thereby be converted into slave territories. In the event of this dissolution, slavery would not be restored in the District of Columbia had it already been abolished there. Were the several States independent of each other, slaves escaping into the non-slave holding States, could never, in any instance, be recovered. Where one slave escapes now, hundreds and thousands would escape if the Union were dissolved, no matter where or how the division might be made. The attempt to recover these slaves upon the borders would keep up a perpetual civil war, until slavery in the border States of the South was extinct and every negro converted into an insurrectionist. "In less than sixty days" after such an event, war would be blazing in every part of this now happy and peaceful land But more forcible than any reasons from expediency, is the well established doctrine which Mr. Clay here enforces in his most eloquent and powerful manner, that the secession of a State is impossible without an entire destruction of the system. Were that system broken up, "there would be a confederacy of the North, a confederacy of the Southern Atlantic slave holding States and a confederacy of the Valley of Mississippi. "My life upon it, the vast population which has already concentrated, and will concentrate, on the head waters of the tributaries of the Mississippi will never give their consent that the mouth of that river shall be held subject to the power of any foreign State or community whatever. Such, I believe, would be the consequences of a dissolution of the Union, immediately ensuing; but other confederacies would spring up from time to time, as dissatisfaction and discontent were disseminated throughout the country-the confederacy of the Lakes, perhaps the confederacy of New England, or of the Middle States. Ah, sir, the veil which covers those sad and disastrous events which lie beyond it, is too thick to be penetrated or lifted by any mortal eye or hand." The distinguished orator declares that he is for staying within the Union, and fighting for his rights, if necessary, within the bounds and under the safeguard of the Union. He will not be driven out of the Union by any portion of this confederacy. One or more States have no right to secede from the Union. "The Constitution was not made merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity-unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity," and every State that has come into the Union has bound itself by indissoluble bands, "to remain within it by its posterity forever." There can be no divorce-there must be conciliation and forbearance. War and dissolution are inseparable-a war, terrible, exhausting, exterminating, until some Philip or Alexander, some Cæsar or Napoleon, should arise and cut the Gordian knot, and solve at length the problem of the capacity of man for self-government. In the course of the preceding argument against the expediency, first, of a direct legislative action upon the territories, and second of the adoption of a line of compromise, we have sufficiently developed the principles of the third line of policy, which has been so ably indicated and defended in the Message of the President and the resolutions and speech of Mr. Clay. This policy neither assaults the prejudices, nor compromises the principles of either section. It is based upon the general opinion of the nation, that slavery is not a system which we should desire, for its own sake, to see extended, and which ought indeed to be restricted; but that the necessary restriction having been already made by nature, and by circumstance,-it would be unwise, to say the least, to move at the present junction, for any legislative action, either by compromise, or by direct prohibition, against the extension of slavery. SHIRLEY, JANE EYRE AND WUTHERING HEIGHTS. THESE brilliant novels are written by kindred hands, and shew a marked resemblance of mental powers in their authors, and as strong contrasts of character. The knowledge displayed of the springs of human conduct, is wonderful, as is the dramatic power, which, in a few bold touches, brings the strongest but most truthful phases of character before us. Both writers, too, are wanting in that inferior creative genius which makes mere narrative interesting. Their plots drag heavily along; and we bend over the pages, as gold-diggers over yellow sands, in search of hidden treasures. This defect injures their power of portraiture, and some scenes are failures, plainly from inability to weave incident to clothe the fair conceptions of their fancy. But this dullness of the back-ground increases the vividness with which the main figures are thrown forward. The life-like effect is indeed so great, that, with Shakspeare's characters, no one doubts their existence. Jane Eyre, and Rochester, and Shirley, as well as Hamlet and Juliet, live, and are very well known to all that have once read of them; they are choice acquaintance, and have more reality to us than nine-tenths of the men and women we shake hands with, and salute every day of our lives. But not merely in character do these novels excel; they are the best love-stories we have ever read; and first in this respect-let not our fair readers shudder-stands Wuthering Heights. This book tears off, roughly enough, the tinsel from passion. It has no interest of plot, range of character, or the chivalric attributes that love gives birth to, or rather displays; but we have the man, harsh, pitiless, wolfish, without a spark of kindness for the woman whose passion yet fills his whole life, with less than kindness for his fellow-men; a human wild beast, uncommon but not unnatural, of whom there are many around us muzzled by society, and who show their fangs only in troubled times. The woman, too, equally dead to pity, but without downright malevolence, is bright and biting as a clear day in winter. The passion of these human tigers for each other is pure love, or rather sheer love. Selfish- —as all love is in its essence; not sensual, for it is a woman that writesfierce and frenzied. Their passion-plaints are "beautiful exceedingly." Thoroughly selfish, for they are without those traits that re-act on love and redeem it of its selfishness. Parrhasius-like, they would have doomed each other to hideous tortures, to have drawn forth one gasp of passion. Without the shadow of remorse for the share he had in her fate, he lives through many years with his heart moaning for his love; he hears her in the wailing winds, he sees her in the midnight mists; when he dies, worn out by his heated brain, the hope that smiles on his brow is to have his place in the church-yard corner where she lies; brighter than heaven to him, to lie by the side of the dead woman. Equally truthful, though less wrought up, are the love-scenes in Jane Eyre and Shirley; less wrought up in the portrayal of passion, they involve a greater knowledge of character, and in one respect are complete studies. So far as they go, they present a perfect analysis of love. They point out the mental and moral traits for which, and for which only, men and women love each other. Personal beauty is mental beauty shining through the form and features. A thick opaque countenance may hide the beautiful soul within; distorted features may caricature it, but the assistance that regular features give is negative; they are the tabula rasa on which our hearts write their stories. In the painting of this inward comeliness, the writer shows all her strength. She wastes no time on the mere appearance of her heroes, and in skilful touches pictures how the hearts of her women are won by manly qualities alone; manly qualities, not acts. purposeless lives of the men in these books is objected to, and cited as a proof of the The writers being women. The conclusion is good, but the objection fallacious. The common error in literature is the representation of passive emotion by action. Feeling is quiescent. "As when a bell no longer swings, Character is shewn as much by the fireside as in the battle of life; and women, who are the quickest to perceive native force, see nothing of men in their struggles with the world. Our manners with them are trimmed to as unvarying a standard as our coats or our whiskers; but a single word or tone, a flash of the eye or quiver of the lip, and the strong heart is bared to these quick observers. The still life of these novels is well fitted for this delicate training; and admirably is it accomplished. The strong soul in man is beautiful to women; still more so the strong soul that is "tender and true." Force and gentleness compel their love. Shirley, who already knows that Gerard is a man among men, unmoved by danger or disaster, selfreliant, unflagging in the pursuit of his foe, is told by Caroline that he is, among those he loves, gentle and considerate. Shirley is instantly struck with his personal beauty. "I know somebody to whose knee the cat loves to climb; against whose knee and cheek it likes to purr. The old dog always comes out of his kennel andwags his tail, and whines affectionately when somebody passes.' "And what does that somebody do?' "He quietly strokes the cat, and lets her sit while he well can, and when he must disturb her by rising, he puts her softly down, and never flings her from him roughly; he always whistles to the dog, and gives it a caress.' "Does he? It is not Robert.' "But it is Robert.' "Handsome fellow,' said Shirley, with enthusiasm; her eyes sparkled." The authoress has slight sympathy for kindness; hence the action in this picture. She is fully alive to magnanimity; hence its dramatic truth. Its deep philosophy comes from the heart of a woman, not the brain of a man. The character of Louis More, and the scenes in which he bears a part in the latter part of the book, are, in a degree, fail ures. The materials were poor, and the author's constructive powers unequal to the task. The tutor, the maiden, and a choleric old uncle, together with the, perhaps, intentional poverty of the plot, were too much, even, for this writer. Bulwer would have worked up the same materials to intense interest, but he never could have given utterance to the beautiful thought that was vainly struggling in the brain of the authoress of Shirley. She wished to draw the Apollo of a heart which less than Apollo could hardly fill. What such a heart could comprehend, it could not love. Shirley saw that Gerard had worth, knowledge of men, simple dignity, and he excites her woman's admiration. She saw, too, his self-ignorance and narrowed sphere of thought, and he fails to move her love. The writer wishes to paint a man superior in every respect to this noble-hearted, noble-minded woman. Inferiority in the man, of any kind, even conventional, destroys the perfection of love. This trait she paints in two words. 667 My pupil,' My Master."" Before he can speak of love to her, he escapes from their present social position, and reverts to their former relations of teacher and scholar. Lamartine in Raphael forgets this point when he makes his hero sit a snubbed youth in a corner, while his mistress, as a woman, is treated with deference by the assembled savans. Our authoress wishes to paint the ideal that is in every woman's heart. Such a man never trod the earth but once. His story is simple and old. But the manhood of that man has never been repeated. She could do no otherwise than fail. The scene between the lovers and the testy old uncle, ends in a caricature. Such a character as the tutor's should hardly indulge in vulgar violence; at any rate, it should have been demoniac. Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, would have thrust the offender by the head into the burning grate. Caroline, is a character the masculine readers of this book will delight to dwell upon. Submissive, sympathizing, truthful, seeking support for her gentle nature, she has for Gerard all that boundless devotion that Shirley could also feel, but only for superhuman perfection. The fervor of manly love is drawn with |
