emergency should occur. It is too low to
command the cotton we shall want from In-
dia, if the American crop really fails us; and
it will remain too low as long as the calam-
itous hypothesis we are considering is con-
sidered by the commercial community as
problematic or improbable.
This is in re-
ality our greatest danger, and we do not
see how it can be averted. As the months
roll on, and bring no prospect of a set-
tlement, when December arrives and the
blockade continues as strict, and the passions
of the combatants as exasperated as ever (if
such should be the course of events),—then
we shall take the alarm, and cotton will run

mills to work four days a week. But WILL the price reach this height? WILL cotton go up fast enough and far enough to produce the desired result? Clearly not, unless merchants and manufacturers can be brought to believe in the actual loss of the American crop;-and not only at present do they not believe in this, but they can scarcely even be induced to entertain it as a supposition. The universal answer made both in Liverpool and Manchester, and even in London, to any one who broaches the conjecture, is: "Oh, it will never come to that. They will make it up before Christmas. Or we shall break the blockade or compel a peace, or something. We shall get their cotton some-up to fabulous rates. But then it will be too how." No one, however, attempts to suggest how.

But as

late for even those rates to bring the augmented Indian supply to mitigate our famine.

We are not surprised either at the slow- We have written these remarks in no less of merchants to realize the menaced ca- alarmist spirit. We are only anxious that lamity, or at their caution in acting upon its our friends in the North especially should probability. The chance for every specula- not shut their eyes to a contingency which tor lies between riches or ruin. It is and however difficult it may be to realize or to must be to a great degree a gambling mat- believe in any thing so calamitous-is by no ter. If the United States crop was known means uniikely, indeed is, according to to be destroyed, there could be no doubt present appearances, more probable than what the effect would be on the price of cot-otherwise. We must postpone some obserton and on the consequent operations of mer- vations we had wished to make as to the chants. Every man would know what to do chances of averting it, till our next issue. and what he might safely venture. the crop is merely withheld, and might any day be liberated and come forward, no one knows how to act or how far to venture. To make the matter plain, let us assume some conjectural figures. Say, that if we are not to have the United States crop, the fair price of uplands would be 18d. per lb. The consumer buys at this rate; the merchant sends out his orders to Egypt and Bombay at these or corresponding limits. If war is persisted in and the blockade continues strict and effective, the operators make large profits. If the belligerents make up their differences, get sick of the dispute, or accept the mediation of England and France, and the blockade is raised-and no one can say that this is not any and every day upon the cards the price of cotton falls inevitably to 9d. and the operators are utterly ruined. No wonder that men of character and wealth decline committing themselves to so terrible a risk.

They remember 1825, when middling Orleans, which was 9d. in January, rose to 18d. in May, and fell again to 9d. in December. The ruin that ensued was frightful, and the terrible warning has not been forgotten. The plain truth is, that the future of cotton is so thoroughly and hopelessly uncertain and incalculable, that only reckless men dare meddle with it boldly; and, in consequence, the price is advancing far too slowly and timidly to meet the emergency, if that

From The Spectator, 13 July. WHAT ENGLISH ABOLITIONISTS WANT. THERE is one assumption which influences all argument and distorts all opinion upon the results of this American struggle, and that is the impossibility of enfranchising the slaves without risking a servile war. Voluntary enfranchisement, i.e., emancipation with the full consent of owners, is admitted on all hands to be impossible. The smallest conceivable compensation, the full price, that is, for adults only, would cost four hundred millions, and though forty millions a year for ten years is not a sum absolutely beyond American competence to raise, it is quite beyond any taxation to which a democracy is likely to submit. If, therefore, say the concealed friends of the South, with a keen comprehension of British feeling, voluntary action is impossible, the abolitionists are driven back on force, and force can be applied only in one way. they admit, call on the slaves to rise, but the summons would be followed by horrors such as even the Indian Mutiny did not present. In every corner of the South, there are isolated estates, garrisoned by a few white men, but tenanted by many white women and children, whose protectors are serving in the ranks. Slaves once broke loose have no idea of moderation, and the land would be covered with crime, before which

The North can,

442

humanity would recoil, or in a blaze of
righteous wrath consent to the reimposi-
Short of this horrible
tion of the chain.
risk there is no alternative, and therefore,
say the friends of the South, whatever be
the result of the war, it cannot be enfran-
chisement. That hope must be abandoned,
and with it the sympathy which still links
the hearts of freemen to the bombastic and
arrogant North.

Now, we start at once with the admission
that if this be the only alternative, if the
choice lies between continuing the misery of
the slaves and ending that misery by steep-
ing them in crime, we submit silently to the
necessity which at least does not stain the
soul with new or irremediable offence. We
prefer to trust the slaves to the mercy of
God, than to free them by the breach of his
dearest laws. The right of the slave to re-
gain his freedom, even if the effort involve
slaughter, is as clear as any other application
of the right of self-defence. But our right
to tempt him to slaughter, to avenge one
crime by risking the commission of another,
is one on which no man should stand, unless
more certain of his own convictions than we
can profess to be. But admitting that ser-
vile insurrection is a crime, even a crime so
great that its instigators can have no justi-
fication, we utterly deny that it is one risked
in the unspoken thought of English aboli-
tionists, or of necessity involved in forcible
enfranchisement. Loss there must be, and
destruction, and perhaps terrible suffering
for the lives of a generation. Great crimes
always entail some retribution, and even the
lavishness of England could not save the
reckless planters of the West Indies from
the ruin their cruelty had deserved. But of
blood not one drop need be shed, at least by
servile hands. The unspoken hope of the
English abolitionists-we do not speak of
the Americans, who have become ulcerated
by the close contemplation of unutterable
and long-continued wrong-is, we take it,
something in this wise. The reunion of the
states, the absolute integrity of the Ameri-
can nation, is a necessity no political com-
promises can affect. The states, if they are
not to exist on the footing of petty jarring
republics, as contemptible as those of South
America, must form one unbroken whole,
and form it, too, with the consent of such a
section of the people as shall render civil war
As the war
no danger to be provided for.
drifts on endlessly, and compromise after
compromise breaks down, and expenditure
becomes ruinous, and misery unendurable,
the American mind, which, once raised to a
white heat, has a tendency to harden, will
grow iron in the conviction that the cause of
all this must end. The root and origin of

all this strife must be plucked away, and the
states so reorganized, that the willing cohe-
sion at least of the next generation shall
once more be possible. The instant that
conviction is fairly entertained, the instant
the North is determined that, whatever the
pecuniary loss, all slavery shall cease, the
path to that end will become practicable and
clear. There is no need of laws, or procla-
mations, or appeals, such as are sure to stir
to madness a race who will add to the re-
venge nurtured by suffering, the savage en-
ergy which the hope of Utopia even in Eu-
rope inspires. The less the slaves know of
their coming freedom the better for them,
and for their benefactors. As each state in
The easiest
succession was occupied by the troops forced
labor would absolutely cease.
way to enfranchise the bond would be to con-
fiscate them to the Union, and settle all who
did not take free service on wild lands, held
on condition of a high rent to their former
owners. They would, it may be said, still
rise. Against what, or whom? the masters
they are free from, or the new and invisible
master, who demands nothing but strict
obedience to the ordinary laws of human so-
ciety? The slaves of the West Indies-and
some at least of our readers, have not for-
gotten the sworn testimony as to their suf-
ferings-never raised a hand in vengeance,
though far more nearly masters than the
slaves of a state in military occupation are
likely to be. If, despite all experience the
negroes should commit crime, they would be
as liable to punishment as they are now.
With the status of freemen they must accept
its responsibilities, the liability to be hung
amongst the rest. There would, however, we
verily believe, be no crime; the sense of re-
lief from an ever-present terror, would swal-
low up all other emotions, and leave behind
it for the moment the single and pleasant
vice of outrageous idleness. The picture
may be far too bright, the American mind
may never rise to the greatness of such a
sacrifice of prejudice, the slaves may be more
evil than we take them to be; but this is,
we believe, the hope of the English aboli-
tionist, a forcible enfranchisement it is true,
but one affected without the destruction of
human life.

But, we shall be told, even if life is preserved, think of the awful destruction of property such an enfranchisement will occasion. Blacks, once free, will not labor, and who is to plant the grain which is to keep the population alive, or pick the cotton which will keep the mills of Great Britain in full work. The owners of property will be reduced to beggary, the land will sink out of cultivation, and the entire South, a whole nation of pec, and a territory as large as

ten Englands, be utterly and irretrievably to profusion. At first, in the temporary anruined. We blankly deny the fact, and the nihilation of capital, he must be paid out of possibility of the fact. That the three hun- the crop, instead of in cash, but that system, dred and fifty thousand individuals who now known in Europe as the métayer, is quite own slaves will be more or less injured for endurable for a time, and is the very system a time, we are not concerned to question. which slavery compels the planters to adopt. Even their tremendous fall will be broken by The white is acclimatized, and can labor judicious advances of capital, by the quit- anywhere except in the worst swamps, which rental, and by the high value their great es- must be left to the negro on a produce rent, tates will acquire through the rise which or finally abandoned. To say that he caninevitably follows the introduction of free not work, is to deny the fact that he does, labor. They will suffer still, but pecuniary as a German free settler, sow, hoe, and pick suffering no more gives them a right to com- cotton, the very best cotton which reaches pensation than the abolition of a duty gives the English market, so valuable indeed as a similar right to smugglers. They are de- to make up the whole difference between the prived of nothing which is their own. Slav- value of slave and the value of free labor. ery, altogether apart from its attendant evils, His cultivation, moreover, does not exhaust the cruelty necessarily begotten of terror- the soil, a fact in itself worth millions to ism, the license to which the enslavement of the South, while he is capable under the women will always give rise, comprehends, hope of gain of efforts the whip has at all as its very essence, one permanent crime. times failed to produce. In three years we Slavery is theft, though slave-owners are not firmly believe the produce of the South so thieves, the constant theft from the slave of far from decreasing will be doubled, while the wages of his labor and freedom, means if the profit on that produce should be more simply the termination of the right to con- equally divided than before, if the planter tinue that form of wrong. Personally, the should be poorer and the laborer richer than owners, bred in an evil system which many of old, surely that is not a result at which of them abhor, are entitled to every consid- humanity should groan. eration, to every effort society can make to alleviate the bitterness of the blow. There are plenty of St. Clairs in the South despite Mr. Olmsted. But as a class the owners simply lose that to which they have no right, and must accept the temporary poverty the ending of so mighty a wrong inevitably entails. But for the South as a whole, we utterly deny that enfranchisement means ruin. On the contrary, it means the gradual but swift enriching of the white population now steeped to the lips in poverty and wretchedness. The black race for one generation, at all events, very probably will not work except for themselves. We suspect, some evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that like all the dark races except the Chinese, like the natives of India, and the Italian peasantry, they are extremely industrious when working for themselves, and grossly negligent when working for hire. Half civilized races usually are, the want with them being one not of industry but of principle. We have no fervent belief in Uncle Toms, who, uniess slavery is an elevating institution must be very exceptional individuals, and we look for aid to classes other than liberated slaves. The instant slavery ceases the mean white becomes a highly paid laborer, and one at least as efficient as his rival. In Virginia he grows tobacco, in Texas he picks cotton in a style with which no negro can compete. Work for wages is the want of the mean white, and once labor has ceased to be disgraceful he will have work

And the slaves? We are not of those who contend for outraging race prejudices, or for an equality which circumstances refuse. Freedom must be given from above, but the race must carn citizenship for itself. We ask neither political privileges, nor enforced maintenance, nor settlement on the soil, nor liberation from a taxation which shall compel toil, nor any other of the fifty claims men with ulcerated hearts have put forward to the injury of their cause. Let the negro be settled on the soil the white man cannot use, till he can earn by purchase the privilege of choice, or enter into domestic service as a free man, or, in short, take his place as a prolétaire, till industry and thrift win him a higher position. There is no more reason to give him the suf frage, than to give it to English paupers; no more necessity to let political power pass beyond the whites of the South, than to degrade it below the educated class in Italy; no more obligation not to tax him till he must work, than to abstain from taxing Indian ryots. All that is wanted is freedom; freedom for the slave to work without blows; freedom for the white to earn wages without the burning sense of a degrading rivalry in toil; that freedom we firmly believe may be conceded without bloodshed, without unendurable suffering, and without even a suspension of the prosperity of the South.

*

The most interesting news of the week is contained in the letters of the London correspondent of the Times. He is safely out of

Southern hands, and he describes a state of absurd and destructive folly, it cannot be said affairs as existing in the South which confirms to rest on that of Mr. Calhoun." the worst accounts travellers have ever reMr. Johnson is unquestionably a gentleman ported. The contempt for life is universal. Murder, almost motiveless, is of constant oc- of profound legal ability; but it is in vain for currence, and passes unpunished. The mob, him, or any individual, to attempt to prove composed of the lowest ruffians, is socially su- that the secessionists assent or appeal to any preme, and the only plan of the leaders to other principle now than that which Calhoun reform society is to deprive the people of their enunciated thirty years ago, in disseminating suffrage. Debts owing to the North are uni- which he spent the labor of his entire life, versally repudiated, and to express dislike of and ruined two generations of Southern men, slavery is to commit suicide. On the slaves who have been educated to believe it. It is Mr. Russell is very reserved, but he was im- impossible for even Mr. Johnson to shield the pressed with the universal appearance of sad-memory of his friend from the indignant scorn ness and melancholy in the dark race. He which must attach to the name of Calhoun never heard a laugh; and obviously does not throughout the ages of posterity, for it is the believe in happy negroes. His letter of treasonable doctrine he strove to propagate Wednesday is enough of itself to crush any and diffuse which is drenching the nation tofeeling of sympathy for the South which may day in fraternal blood. linger in English minds.

Calhoun derived his first treasonable ideas of nullification and secession from the Hartford Convention, though from the odium which

CALHOUN AND HIS NULLIFICATION DOC- attached to it he artfully concealed, while he

TRINE.

jesuitically falsified, the doctrines of Mr. Jefferson, and made friends and disciples by making Jefferson appear as its founder and leader.

He was always ostensibly a patriot, while using the powers of an opulent intellect to subvert the liberties of the people and the Government, for which our revolutionary fathers fought and died.

MARYLAND, July 13, 1861. To the Hon. Edward Everett :-If I had not already been convinced that a proper understanding of the secession question was even yet a desideratum in our own beloved land, a conclusive proof would have been afforded me by the recent letter of the Hon. Reverdy Johnson, of my state, which I find appended The secession doctrine was first openly proto your magnificent oration of the 4th instant. In a short time I shall publish a book, in mulgated by Calhoun in the Fort Hill address, which the American public will find a faith- July 26, 1831; and it is now the doctrine of ful and impartial exposition of the question, all traitors, without improvement, modifica and the men who have involved the necessity tion, or emendation. In that address Calhoun for our present recourse to arms. notice of Mr. Johnson's singular letter is not now to vindicate the truth of history, but to correct the present detriment which may arise from the grave errors and non sequiturs which are given the public over the sign manual of his distinguished name.

Hence my

Mr. Johnson, in his letter to you of the 24th ultimo, writes thus of the late John C. Calhoun on the question of nullification :

"Time and time again have I heard him, and with ever increased surprise at his wonderful acuteness, defend it on constitutional grounds, and distinguish it in that respect from the doctrine of secession. This last he never, with me, placed on any other ground than that of revolution. This, he said, was to destroy the Government, and no constitution, the work of sane men, ever provided for its own destruction. The other was to preserve it, was, practically, but to amend it, and in a constitutional mode.

*

"If such a heresy, therefore, as secession could rest on any individual name; if any mere human authority could support such an

said:

"That the Constitution of the United States is in fact a compact, to which each state is a party, and that the several states fractions, and in case of a deliberate, palpaor parties have a right to judge of its inble, and dangerous exercise of power not delegated, they have the right, in the last resort-to use language of the Virginia resolutions to interpose for arresting the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them.' This right of interposition thus, solemnly asserted by the state of Virginia, be it called what it may-state right, veto, nullification, or by any other name-I conceive to be the fundamental principle of our system. Against these conclusive arguments, as they seem to me, it is objected that if one of the parties has the right to judge of infractions of the Constitution, so has the other; and that consequently, in case of contested powers between a state and the General Government, each would have a right to maintain its

"That the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities, are unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States, and violate the