INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

IF the conduct of the Northern and Southern extremes of the two factions in Congress is to be taken as an index of the state of feeling on the subject of slavery in the country at large, our hopes of a settlement of this pernicious and destructive controversy should be faint indeed. As it has arisen not so much from contrariety of interest as from opposition of sentiment, the interests of the nation, strictly considered, being bound up in the welfare of the South, the remedy to be applied should be sought in the sources of the disease. The disease is a controversy arising from speculative opinion and ambition; the remedy is in a modification of opinion by a suitable array of facts and arguments. These facts and these arguments must be furnished by moderate and discreet minded persons on both sides. We here present our readers with two articles; both of them by gentlemen practically familiar with the institution of slavery; and indeed, educated in the society under which that institution is tolerated. We have no apology to offer, if any were demanded by our Northern readers, for the introduction of these articles. For the peace and security of the country it is just, it is necessary that slaveholders should speak for themselves, and should, moreover, be heard, and their arguments deliberately weighed. It is not the custom in free

VOL. V. NO. IV. NEW SERIES.

States to condemn unheard, either a man or an institution.

Our own opinions, in regard to the powers of Congress in legislating for the territory are well known, and have been sufficiently explained. In the first of the two articles which we submit to our readers it is argued, as it seems to ourselves, conclusively, that the State sovereignties not only have a perfect right, but ought to make stringent laws against the importation of slaves into their territories; and that the slave trade in the District of Columbia may, and ought to be, suppressed by the authority of the General Government. The author of that article is a large slaveholder in the State of Mississippi, and is by birth and education a Southern man. We have the best reason to believe that he speaks the sentiment of the majority in his own State. We are constrained, however, to differ from him, in the distinction which he makes between the propriety of the exercise of the power of Congress for the prevention of slavery in the territories. It seems to our own view an unnecessary distinction. Since slavery does not exist in New Mexico, California, and the Great Basin of Deseret, the de facto governments of those regions, whether lodged in Congress, or in the people of the territories, or in territorial organization, have, as it seems to us, an unquestionable right, as a regulation of police, just as the State sovereignties have that right for States, and

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The objection of our author to the employment of legislative authority for the emancipation of slaves, is answered by the fact that precedent is already in favor of such employment; that State legislatures in the North have abolished slavery in their States, and their acts are held to be salid. Whether the Government in any State has or has not the power to establish or abolish, is a question to be settled by the spirit of that government, and by the common understanding.

California is now denied admission to the Union because she has incorporated a prohibition of slavery in her Constitution. Texas was admitted with a clause establishing slavery, so incorporated, and with a provision for the creation of two or more slave States out of her territory. The faction have chosen to forget this; their struggle is for power. The extreme Southern party, under the lead of Mr. Calhoun, have made the somewhat singular announcement, that unless the main political power of the country is lodged in their hands, they cannot remain in the Union. This announcement has, at least, the virtue of directness and simplicity; unless they have an equality or a majority in the Senate, they cannot stay in the Union; they must be able, at any moment, to block the wheels of legislation, to cut off the supplies, to create war or peace, to elect a President to their mind, to purchase and possess, and divide, new territories, to hold the patronage of the central

This making the admission of California the test question, has betrayed the entire system and method of the opposition. Theirs is simply a struggle for political predominance; that they will govern the Union or they will destroy it. Meantime, if we ever for a moment doubted its stability, we now hold the Union to be secure. We have ceased to apprehend its dissolution. The declaration of the ultimatum of the faction has destroyed at once its respectability and its power. A republican people who cannot submit themselves to the ordinary chances and contingencies-to the common movements of events in a Republic, have a dreary history before them. They are no longer fit for self-government who cannot abide by its necessities and its laws. It is, indeed, fortunate for them that they are not the sole citizens and masters of an empire, since, among themselves, and in their own divisions, the minority would have no alternative but war. With such a desperate resolution to rule or perish, how brief and how terrible a page would be theirs in the history of the decline and fall of great Republics.

DIGRESSION and irrelevancy in the discussion of political issues are characteristic of American writers and speakers. In Congress, especially, debate is rarely confined to the question under consideration. Collateral points even, which, in an assembly collected of wisdom, true

taste would warn us to leave to inference mainly, fail to afford scope sufficiently ample. Matters totally disconnected with those at issue, are tortuously introduced to make up the speech. Hence, on a memorable occasion in the Senate, Mr. Webster found it necessary, in order to be properly