THE PARRICIDES OF THE REPUBLIC.

THERE has been, the twelve-month past, a very great and general feeling of gratulation at the action of Congress with regard to a certain provision of the original compact of confederation. We will not say that such feeling of joy is without reasonable foundation, but nevertheless we think, nay, we know, that the danger is only averted for a time. If any one think differently, he has a perfect right to enjoy his opinion: but the day is not far distant, when he will perceive good reason to modify and reverse it. Legislative action may frame laws to guard against disunion, and a prompt execution fulfil them to the letter, and yet the root of the evil be untouched. It is the spirit of the popular mind which is to be looked to; and if no means can be devised to make that healthy and sound, the wisest laws cannot avail. It is like applying outward remedies for an impurity of the blood, or damming up a rushing torrent whose source is suf ficient to swell its volume against every obstruction, and produce a general inundation. If you cannot curb in the fountain-head, it were better to let the rising stream alone, and fly to some place of safety.

The passage of the "Compromise" evinced very clearly that patriotism is yet a congressional virtue, and history will mark down the names of its framers and defenders with the enduring and golden characters of FameCass, Webster, Foote, Dickinson, and last not least, the ladies' favorite, the aged patriot of Ashland. But that act merely stays a pressing danger. It does not, and cannot of itself, prevent its recurrence. It is wise and timely, but all that it can do, is to give the efficient friends of the republic some space and opportunity to work in the right quarter. If they rest now, and do no more, the act is nugatory. The lawless spirit which rendered its passage necessary, is still as malignant as ever; indeed, it has acquired new malignity. Nor is this strange. A villain foiled, is twice a villain. We do not speak unadvisedly when we say, that the Slave-Question, so far from being put at rest, is daily becoming more and more the topic of discussion at the North, and in exactly those quarters whence the greatest mischief will arise. Those who tell us that the "Abolitionists" are but a feeble and insignificant body of fanatics, whose numbers are stationary, if not decreasing, premeditate deception. They know the contrary, and are, in truth, the very ones who intend to profit by their growth of numbers. We may be accused of wishing to re-open the dispute which it is imagined Congress has allayed. Would that it rested with us. It does not; nor with any one man, nor ten thousand. The South should know just how the matter stands. It is treachery to our southern friends, and a crime against truth and the republic, to conceal what can be guarded against only by being known. A false sense of security is national suicide. Indeed, the patriotic instrument signed lately at the Capitol by a portion of the upper and lower house, shows that our knowledge of lurking danger is shared by others. That paper speaks well for the hearts of its signers; but, for the life of us, we cannot see how it redounds to their sagacity. The game of politics is a mixed one. Patriotism and personal ambition are so blended, that to show one's hand

before success is absolutely certain, is but giving odds to our antagonists. If a member's district is of his own opinion by a large majority, there is no detriment in signing such an obligation; but if nearly equally divided between patriotism and treason, and his election was the result of personal popularity, such a public "confession of faith," however well his views may be understood, smacks somewhat of defiance, and none but a very god of eloquence can practise defiance long. It were politic to "let well enough alone."

Much has been said, the last few years, of "secession from the Union," and the establishment of a "southern confederacy." Within a few months it has been intimated that foreign aid is relied on in such a contingency. That this treason may have been harbored at the South, is possible; but that the abettors of so infamous a project exist in formidable numbers, none so well know the contrary as those shameless prints and would-be politicians who are constantly feeding the northern mind with fear and suspicion, and who seek to justify the actual presence of a member of the British Parliament aiding northern treason. Were the suffrages of the whole South polled to-day, it would be found that not one in a hundred entertains the remotest wish for such a thing. That a time may arrive when "secession" will be imperative, southern statesmen are not backward in averring; but they also aver, with an earnestness that compels our confidence, that they have too much reliance on northern integrity to deem for a moment the time to be anywhere near or probable. That they are right, we do not doubt in the slightest. But would it not surprise them to know that the project of disunion is of northern growth as well, and that all this agitation with regard to slavery is but the means to drive them to the initiatory steps, and thus the whole crime be laid at southern doors? Would it not startle them to know that a northern confederacy is talked of in secret, and that its constitution, offices, and foreign allies, are mapped out in advance, and the men who are first to fill its posts of honor already named? That these masked traitors find a pretended home in the whig and democratic parties, and that it is their intention to remain there until accident shall tear off their disguise, or ripeness of time render it unnecessary?—That this is known to others beside the conspirators themselves, and aroused a hatred of intense and deadly significance, which will not be appeased until a just and terrible retribution shall have overtaken them? -That in point of numbers these concealed malignants are few, but in respect to thorough drill, fixedness of purpose, and untiring and unscrupulous effort, more than a match for legions of drowsy patriots who dream no evil until some miscreant has his hand and knife at their very throats? And to repeat, that these civilized savages, wholly corrupted by a selfish, narrow, and reckless ambition, are determined to exasperate the South to the point where forbearance ceases to be a virtue, and all the horrors of a civil war inevitable? But our southern friends need not give way to anxiety. Whatever may be their alarm, or ours, this conspiracy cannot ripen in the present generation. There will arise storm after storm, such as has just overpast, and yet the republic remain firm. Of its future destiny, where, by constant struggle and slow accretion, these traitorous few have become a formidable host, we may not prophesy except with tears and gloom. If the friends of the republic sleep on, they and their descendants can but look for overwhelming ruin. If they are aroused betimes,

to efficient and tireless energy, anticipation will be gilded with sunshine, and its blue heavens be cloudless and serene.

Not sharers of this wider plot, yet turbulent to the last degree, are those who make up the rank and file of the abolition army. Like vicious donkeys ridden through a crowd, it needs but their masters' signal to set them kicking alike both friend and foe. When thorough drill has extended also to these, you have a corps of as bloodthirsty and merciless janissaries as ever disgraced and terrified the dominions of Mahmoud. Not that blood is upon their hands as yet; but when we see them distributing guns and side-arms among the negro population of the free states, and urging to extremest resistance of our country's laws, we can but see that if the times were ripe, they themselves, if herded together in sufficient numbers, would become as ferociously cruel as the murderous

lottes" of Paris!

sans-cu

But we do them wrong, these mulatto saints of Oberlin and Peterborough! You could never drill them so that they would congregate in any numbers in the path of blood. They are far too peaceful for the work of slaughter. Even the execution of a midnight murderer chills the pulsation of their hearts. His fate moves their tenderest pity. Heaven is so aroused, as to prompt indignant imprecations upon those who execute the law. O no! these are not the stuff of which janissaries and "sans-culottes" are made. They are much too refined and sensitive for that! Never could you make them anything but what they are!-the fiendish instigators of crime in others, which they dare not themselves commit !— the loud-mouthed revilers of all that is pure and honest and of good report among those who see through the thin veil of their smooth hypoc risy, and expose them! And should civil war arise, you would find them,— not in the field, where the wounded and the dying are shrieking for their aid, not in the streets, behind the barricades, risking their lives against the troops of the republic,-but from attic windows and house-top coverts firing their stealthy shots that cannot be returned!-prowling among deserted and rich dwellings for easy plunder !—or, perchance, if the contest were prolonged, stealing at nightfall here and there to ply the assassin's steel, or in friendly guise, sharing hospitality to mix swift poison with the feast, and then retire to some new but less dreadful deed of rapine or of murder!

If some one of these persons whose virtue and whose boast is being thus inhumanly humane, should indignantly exclaim, like Hazael to the Prophet,-But what! Is thy servant a dog that he should do this great thing?-we could only point him to the subsequent career of the angry questioner, and say that no man can take one step in premeditated iniquity with any certainty of return. The downward road of guilt is smooth and easy, and when one crime has been committed, "of malice prepense, and aforethought," the after gradations no longer strike the mind repulsively, but assume an indifferent or alluring character. Does a man become criminal by sudden temptation and the shock awake him to his guiltiness, he may, with tears, regain his innocence. But he that weighs the chances before his crime, has thereafter no startled sense of horror to fill him with affright. It is now only the consequences, when close upon him, that appal. He is a hopeless felon before he is aware! and, all too late, he thinks with the Mantuan Bard, that "Hell's descent is facile; but to revoke the step and escape to the upper air, is a work of untold labor!

A portion of the northern press, while it cheers on these moral gladiators, also attempts to shield them from attack; feigning indignant astonishment that any one should have the hardihood to denounce such singlehearted and benevolent men, although, mayhap, they forget themselves a little in the warm sympathy they yield to others' wrongs. It says, that even in this they do not and have never done, anything to merit just rebuke, but are quiet, peace-loving citizens, who are desirous only to be unmolested in their work of lofty and pure philanthropy. That they are not plotters nor disturbers of the public weal; but on the contrary, are the sincerest friends of law and order and the good of the whole republic! Let us see if this be not one of the most atrocious and brazen falsehoods ever uttered in any country, to shield any set of scoundrels whatsoever! These "friends of the slave," as they are termed, have organized themselves into a band of negro-thieves! and all the North well knows this, and other facts of which we speak. They have established "vigilance-committees" in every large town and city, whose duty it is instantly to notify each other of the arrival of a Southerner with his servants across the imaginary line of freedom! They have also imposed upon these committees the cheerful duty of dogging the footsteps of both master and servant while they remain, in order to seize the most favorable opportunity to hurry the slave by fraud or force, with his free will or without it, from his owner's hands! They have raised a permanent fund to support lecturers and other agents at the North and West, and these are constantly employed, by stipulation and of ready will, in vilifying the South and its public men! and still farther, in slandering every lover of truth and justice who has the courage to expose their falsehoods! They have sent emissaries, white and black, into the border states, secretly to entice slaves to escape, and to aid them with advice and weapons of defence! They have published masses of incendiary lithographs, wood-cuts, and illustrated pamphlets, and distributed them by stealth to slaves along the whole course of the Ohio and Mississippi, and in all the Atlantic ports, and inland wherever the opportunity of travel has occurred! They have put themselves into close communication with the black servants of northern hotels in the cities and watering places, so that their surveillance over the movements of southerners is complete! They have, by these and numberless other methods, in the last twenty years, lost many thousand slaves to the southern planters, and by thus exasperating them, arrayed one portion of the republic against another! They have striven to carry this ill-blood into politics, and, in part, succeeded! They raised a storm which was like to have overwhelmed the country with desolation! And now, when a wise law is instituted to wall up one source of danger, they have armed the more ignorant and brutish portion of the native and run-away negroes, and encouraged and impelled them to resist the execution of that law even to blood! And within a few weeks, in a large and opulent and enlightened city, have raised a mob of these human brutes, and violated the sanctity of a court of justice! not municipal or provincial, but a court called and held under the supreme authority of the republic! These are the meek and benevolent wretches this shameless lie is framed to cover! If we may not term it atrocious and brazen, then TRUTH is in her grave!

It is full time for us to speak out strongly and plainly of these philanthropic slough-hounds that are tracking patriotism to its death. Their

angry bay deepens as they near their quarry; and if we are not up and doing, soon their brutal work will be accomplished. We have borne too long the epithet of "Northern dough-faces." The name has adhered to us because it has been given justly. There is no doubt that we deserve it. Not as applied-not because there is any truth in the charge that we have cringed to slaveholders; not because we have gloried in "human bondage;"—but because we have not faced down these slanderers, and forced them, and all the world, to know how much we abhor their character and efforts! We have been bullied and spat upon at our own firesides by a ruffianly benevolence, till not only do these black-tongued parricides feel and treat us with contempt, and name us with jeering soubriquets, but we also begin to despise ourselves, and stand before them meek as sheep-thieves in the pillory! The South, not suspecting our degradation, have come to doubt our word of honor; for though we protest very earnestly, and imploringly withal, that we are lovers of the Constitution, yet when the bold and ardent Southron sees that we do not lash these hounds back to their kennels, he imagines that we are all bitten with the same negotic rabies!

There is something for us to do, and that right speedily. As it is, we are exposed to a double fire. We have an enemy both in front and rear, and we stand trembling in our cowardly shoes, not daring to advance or to retreat. Did we speak and act as becomes men, the republic would now be as safe as ever; and had we thus borne ourselves ten years ago, or five, the storm that of late assailed, would not have marshalled its dark cohorts of threatening cloud and overspread the political heavens. But perhaps we are too far gone in our moral paralysis ever to be restored. At any rate, now we are like the fabled ass between the two bundles of hay--which to choose we are unable to decide! Whether to suffer our country to fall into remediless ruin, while, spaniel-like, we fawn and whimper, or whether to arouse ourselves in our ancient manhood, and turn with a strong cartwhip on these fireside villains! While we delay, they increase both in numbers and audacity, and by permitting their augmentation and insolence, we are bringing on disasters for which the next generation will hold us up to universal contempt and execration. These brazen marauders are as yet scarce two individuals in ten thousand, and may be easily crushed, if we have the will; but if left by our own imbecile pusillanimity to unmolested growth, twenty years longer will more than suffice for their work of desolation.

This ignoble cowardice of ours is one grand cause of southern irritation. We show that we have lost the old enthusiastic love of country and of justice, when we are cowed and throttled by so small a gang of miscre ants. Indeed, our position would be merely laughable, were the impending consequences less dangerous. We present a picture which is only not utterly contemptible, because it is so supremely ludicrous. Like poor disheartened Sinbad, our necks are straddled by this old man of the sea, and we go about under our vile burden without daring to complain; ever and anon furtively squinting a beseeching glance at our southern friends that they may do nothing to excite the old fellow's vindictive intemperance! In truth we are but sorry representatives of revolutionary heroes, and they would, if here, disown us. We have, in more senses than one, descended from a lofty stock, and it is a shame that the proud ancestral blood is so soon and sadly disennobled. If this is to continue, it would be as well for