man nature in which is written the inalienable then, that the Constitution is a compact beright of resistance to intolerable wrong. And tween sovereign states, makes, in itself, nothto this blended and we think confused con- ing for the right of secession. It does not ception, the Southern movement has actually bring us one step nearer to that right than be corresponded. It has been a curious blend- fore. We must still look into the instrument ing of legitimate and revolutionary, of peace- itself, and see what is the work which these ful and warlike elements. While asserting, several sovereignties have performed; what in speeches and resolutions, the right of peace-powers they have deposited in it; what they ful withdrawal, its warlike preparations and have withheld. warlike acts evinced a consciousness that the proceeding contained other than peaceful elements. Let us examine briefly both of these grounds, both the alleged right of constitutional withdrawal, and the validity of the reasons for inaugurating a revolution.

NOT A LEAGUE, BUT A GOVERNMENT.

And looking at that instrument, blindness itself can scarcely avoid seeing that our fathers formed, not a league, or confederation, but a government. Without obliterating the previous accidental colonial divisions, they overlaid them, bound them round,

this need confirmation? Look at what they did. They took from the states the power to levy armies, to create navies, to make war or peace, to enter into treaties with each other or with foreign powers, to coin money, to levy imposts on imported goods, to institute postal regulations, and interlaced the whole territory with the ramifications of one vast

national authority. They created all the different branches of a complete civil polity, legislative, executive, and judicial; and without making one syllable of provision for the withdrawal of any of the parties to the arrangement, expressly declared that no state should pass a law conflicting with the laws of the United States within its own borders. Now, whatever may have been the purpose of the framers of the Constitu

The right of secession is based on what is a favorite doctrine with Southern statesmen, that the Constitution is a compact between interpenetrated them, by an all-encompasssovereign states, which, therefore, they have ing and paramount national Union. Does a right to annul at pleasure. The premises in this argument we do not propose now to discuss. In regard to the question before us, we believe it a matter of entire indifference whether the Constitution was formed by the states as such, or by the immediate act of the whole people. The real question is not in what manner the thing was done, but what was actually done; not in what precise ca-judicial system centering at the seat of the pacity the citizens of the country acted in framing the instrument, but what sort of an instrument they framed; what kind of a central authority they created; what powers they conferred upon it, and what powers they withheld. Whatever be the functions and powers of the Constitution, it surely makes no difference whether the people came directly under its obligations, or acting through their established organs as separate states. A sovereign state, we suppose, has the same right to tion, can there be any doubt as to what they modify at pleasure its form of government did? Was there ever an instance in the which it originally had to create it. And it history of mankind in which independent yet remains to be established as a principle of and sovereign states yielded up such powers political ethics, that a sovereign state is not and functions to a mere transient partnerequally bound by the obligations which it has ship, dissolvable at pleasure, and that too at voluntarily assumed, as any private, or any the pleasure or caprice of any single one of number of private individuals. In private eth- the parties? The idea is in the last degree ics, the right to give implies the right to take, preposterous. Whether they meant it or but not the right to take back what you have not, our fathers framed a Constitution, a unreservedly surrendered. Whether it be an government for a nation with an organic individual, or a state, no matter how sovereign life, and not a congeries of loosely aggre—and, in fact, the more completely sovereign gated communities. The Southern people the stronger the argument-obligations sol- talk of the sovereign state of Virginia, or emnly assumed must be abided by until we of South Carolina, and that, under the Conare released from them by the power to which stitution of the United States. What sort we have made the surrender. The theory, of a sovereign state is that, we must ask,

which cannot build or own a ship, a fort, a And precisely this process of nationalizamint, an arsenal, a custom-house, a post- tion augments indefinitely the practical difoffice, which cannot make a treaty, which ficulties of secession. Had the present outcan neither send nor receive an ambassador, break occurred immediately after the organwhose very name, in fact, is as utterly un-izing of the Government, though not less known to the diplomacy of the world as if it | vicious in theory, it would have been fraught lay in the planet Neptune, or the tail of the with less practical injustice. No vast sums last comet? which is all woven over with the of money had then been expended to enlarge, net-work of an exterior judicial and exterior consolidate, and improve the national domain. postal system? Is this a sovereignty to be No series of forts, as Monroe, Pulaski, Sumproud of? Are such the sovereign states to ter, Pickens, would have been at once obwhich the haughty chivalry of the Old Do-jects and strongholds of war. The mouth of minion, and the sons of the Huguenots de- the Mississippi was in the hands of France, light to vow a paramount allegiance? No Florida in the hands of Spain, Texas in the wonder that the votary of state rights chafes under a system whose hard and stubborn facts stand in such contemptuous defiance of his theory.

could scarcely, "but by annihilating, die." Secession is now emphatically venesection, the severing of the veins and arteries of the living body.

RIGHT OF WITHDRAWAL.

hands of Mexico. No national capital had as yet received the expenditure of millions on millions of money, and gathered around it the hopes and affections of the people. For ourselves, we joyfully and gratefully In short, no series of living processes had accept the facts. We regard the Constitu- been long going forward, assimilating, unition itself as little else than the expression fying, binding the several parts into one orof a pre-existing nationality. It was the off-ganic whole, "vital in every part," and which spring of a moral, almost of a natural necessity. Sprung from the same origin, with the same language, the same religion, and to a large extent the same habits and political affinities, with territorial divisions merely accidental, the people flowed together as naturally as kindred drops mingle into one. Their union under a single government was a part of the "pre-established harmony" of things. There might be questions as to specific forms of union, as to a government more or less centralized: but a common government, that should sway, as with a single breath, this vast homogeneous mass, lay in the necessity of the case. It was already grounded in the nationality of the people; it had to be declared rather than created. And we have been gratified to see the process of nationalization, which must infallibly go on under the working of such a government-to see the life of the states more and more absorbed into the all-assimilating life of the nation. It has been my country, and not my state, that has stirred our patriotic pride; and while the excelsior banner that symbolized the Empire State has been dear to us, our paramount devotion has been given to the stars and stripes, that in every corner of our vast territory, and in every quarter of the world, told us of our country, and under whose glorious blazonry we have been rapidly advancing to political and moral supremacy.

But the right of constitutional withdrawal denied, have the South grounds for revolution? May they throw themselves back on that "higher law" which justifies any people in throwing off an intolerable yoke, in disowning a government which ceases to employ its powers for the good of the governed? Such is no doubt the honest conviction of multitudes of the Southern people. But where lies the wrong? The clear-sighted Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy had failed to discover it when, in his speech of November last, he declared the disunion movement a revolt from the best and most beneficent government on earth. It can scarcely lie in the acts of the national administration, for in this the South has had from the beginning, according to its frequent and just boast, a paramount share. Nearly all our Presidents have been men, either elected from the South, or in whose favorable disposition the South has reposed full confidence. By an exceptional feature in our representation, it has been accorded a more than proportionate influence in our councils, while the unity of Southern action on all questions specially affecting Southern

interests has enabled it generally to over-provements, postal service. We need but rule the divided counsels of the North. If point to the vast territories which have been our protective traiff has been a grievance to obtained by purchase, or arms, or both, and some portions of the South, it has been a annexed to the Southern territory, and made vast benefit to others; while the policy, the depository of Southern institutions. whether for good or for evil, originated with Louisiana, with the immense territory wathe South, and was at the outset opposed by tered by the lower Mississippi, Florida, the North; and even where it has borne Texas-what millions of treasure, what rivers of blood have been lavished that these vast somewhat hardly, the evil has been in no regions, large enough of themselves for an proportion to the benefits conferred by the empire, might go to extend the domain and national government. We need but refer to swell the social and political influence of the forts, navy-yards, custom-houses, harbor im-South!

GOYON AND DE MERODE.

A LAY OF LEICESTER SQUARE.

AH! 'ave a you eerd ze news wheech 'ave occur
joost now?

Monsignor de Mérode wiz Goyan 'ave von row.
Ze Général demand, and Monsignor deny,
Surrender of Zouave for some offence to try.

To Général Goyon, of Monsignor Mérode,

UNDER the heading of "Curiosities of Literature," Mr. Hotten, of Piccadilly, has just pubcollection of books and literary curiosities, comlished a catalogue of a singularly interesting prising jest-books, bibliography, heraldry, volumes of humor and pleasantry, black-letter books, works condemned to be burnt, or whose authors were imprisoned or whipped to death, interspersed with numerous literary anecdotes.

Ze ansare, in Inglees exprased, vas "You be Amongst the more noticeable works we observe

blowed;

an unpublished manuscript of Roger Bacon; an autograph manuscript of the poet Burns; Tyndall's new Testament, 1552; and a very curious book entitled "L'Art de Bien Discourir;" or the art of manufacturing sermons and essays to order, in any quantity and upon any subject.

POETRY.

PAGE.

National Review,

691

Blackwood's Magazine,

707

London Star,

723

London Review,

724

66

Saturday Review,

728

66

Independent,

735

The Opening of the Leaves, 690. Sun and Rain, 690. The Sunny Side the Way, 690. A Call to Action, 690. De Profundis, 735. Other Worlds, 736. Coming Home, 736. Crown and Cross, 736.

"Soda Residues," 706.

SHORT ARTICLES.-In Press, 706, 722, 725. Louis Philippe's Opinion of Washington, 722. Meeting of Astronomers, 722. Christian Consciousness, 725. Liberty, 727. Cut Flowers, 727. A Note on Sudden Deaths, 731. Night Telegraph Army Signals, 731. The Employment of Camels in California, 731.

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