invented a legerdemain of funding which succeeded not only in depreciating the currency, but also in dishonouring the gov

ernment.

The experiments of Mr. Memminger on the currency was the signal of multiplied and rapid depreciation. While the eccentric and pious Secretary was figuring out impossible schemes of making money, or ransacking the book-stores for works on religious controversy, unprincipled brokers in the Confederacy were undermining the currency with a zeal for the destruction of their country not less than that of the Yankees. The assertion admits of some qualification. Sweeping remarks in history are generally unjust. Among those engaged in the business of banking and exchange in the South, there were undoubtedly some enlightened and public-spirited men who had been seduced by the example or constrained by the competition of meaner and more avaricious men of the same profession, to array themselves against the currency, and to commit offences from which they would have shrunk in horrour, had they not been disguised by the casuistry of commerce and gain.

It was generally thought in the South reprehensible to refuse the national currency in the payment of debts. Yet the broker, who demanded ten dollars in this currency for one in gold, really was guilty of nine times refusing the Confederate money. It was accounted shocking for citizens in the South to speculate in soldiers' clothing and bread. Yet the broker, who demanded nine or ten prices for gold, the representative of all values, speculated alike in every necessary in the country. Nor was this the greatest of their offences. With unsurpassed shamelessness brokers in the Confederacy exposed the currency of the North for sale and demanded for it four hundred per cent. premium over that of the Confederacy! This act of benefit to the Yankees was openly allowed by the government. A bill had been introduced in Congress to prohibit this traffic and to extirpate this infamous anomaly in our history; but it failed of enactment, and its failure can only be

attributed to the grossest stupidity, or to sinister influences of the most dishonourable kind. The traffiic was immensely profitable. State bonds and bank bills to the amount of many millions were sent North by the brokers, and the rates of discount were readily submitted to when the returns were made in Yankee paper money, which, in the Richmond shops, was worth in Confederate notes five dollars for one.

One-but only one-cause of the depreciation of the Confederate currency was illicit trade. It had done more to demoralize the Confederacy than anything else. The inception of this trade was easily winked at by the Confederate authorities; it commenced with paltry importations across the Potomac; it was said that the country wanted medicines, surgical instruments and a number of trifles, and that trade with the Yankees in these could result in no serious harm. But by the enlarged license of the government it soon became an infamy and a curse to the Confederacy. What was a petty traffic in its commencement soon expanded into a shameless trade, which corrupted the patriotism of the country, constituted an anomaly in the history of belligerents, and reflected lasting disgrace upon the honesty and good sense of our government. The country had taken a solemn resolution to burn the cotton in advance of the enemy; but the conflagration of this staple soon came to be a rare event; instead of being committed to the flames it was spirited to Yankee markets. Nor were these operations always disguised. Some commercial houses in the Confederacy counted their gains by millions of dollars since the war, through the favour of the government in allowing them to export cotton at pleasure. The beneficiaries of this trade contributed freely to public charities and did certain favours to the government; but their gifts were but the parings of immense gains; and often those who were named by weak and credulous people or by interested flatterers as public-spirited citizens and patriotic donors, were, in fact, the most unmitigated extortioners and the vilest leeches on the body politic.

In this war we owe to the cause of truth some humiliating confessions. Whatever diminution of spirit there may have been in the South since the commencement of her struggle, it has been on the part of those pretentious classes of the wealthy, who, in peace, were at once the most zealous "secessionists" and the best customers of the Yankees, and who, now, in war, are naturally the sneaks and tools of the enemy. The cotton and sugar planters of the extreme South who prior to the war were loudest for secession, were at the same time known to buy every article of their consumption in Yankee markets, and to cherish an ambition of shining in the society of Northern hotels. It is not surprising that many of these affected patriots have found congenial occupation in this war in planting in copartnership with the enemy, or in smuggling cotton, into his lines. The North is said to have obtained in the progress of this war, from the Southwest and Charleston, enough cotton at present prices to uphold its whole system of currency-a damning testimony of the avarice of the planter. Yet it is nothing more than a convincing proof, in general, that property, though very pretentious of patriotism, when identified with selfishness, is one of the most weak and cowardly things in revolutions and the first to succumb under the horrours of war.

It is pleasing to turn from the exhibition of ignorance and weakness in the government, and the vile passions of its favourites, to the contemplation of that patriotic spirit which yet survives in the masses of the people and keeps alive the sacred animosities of the war. We rejoice to believe that the masses are not only yet true, but that a haughtier and fiercer spirit than ever animates the demand of our people for independence, and insures their efforts to obtain it. The noble people and army who have sustained and fought this war will have cause to rejoice. Society in the South is being upheaved by this war, and with our independence will be re-established on new orders of merit. The insolent and pampered slaveholding interest of the South; the planters' aristocracy blown

with conceit and vulgar airs of patronage; the boast of lands and kin give way before new aspirants to honour. The republic gives new titles to greatness. Many of those who were esteemed great politicians before the war are now well-nigh forgotten. The honours of State, the worship of society, the rewards of affection are for the patriots of the revolution that will date our existence. Such are the great prizes, intertwined with that of independence, which stir our people and army with noble desires and beckon them to victory.

It is not only in the present external situation of the war that encouragement is to be found for the South. With considerable additions to her material elements of success, the South has in the second year of the war abated none of that moral resolution which is the vital and essential principle of victory, whatever co-operation and assistance it may derive from external conditions. That resolution has been strengthened by recent developments; for as the war has progressed, the enemy has made a full exposure of his cruel and savage purposes, and has indicated consequences of subjugation more terrible than death.

He has, by the hideous array of the instruments of torture which he has prepared for a new inauguration of his authority among those who have disputed it, not only excited the zeal of a devoted patriotism to war with him, but has summoned even the mean but strong passions of selfishness to oppose him. The surrender to an enemy as base as the Yankee, might well attract the scorn of the world and consign the South to despair. The portions of such a fate for the South are gibbets, confiscation, foreign rule, the tutelage of New England, the outlawry of the negro, the pangs of universal poverty, and the contempt of mankind.

War is a thing of death, of mutilation and fire; but it has its law of order; and when that law is not observed, it fails in effecting the purpose for which it is waged, and the curse it would inflict recoils upon itself. It is remarkable in the present war, that the policy of the Washington government has

been an increase in every feature of the first cause of the revolt. But this has been fortunate for the South. The consequences of such despotic and savage violences, as the emancipation proclamation, the arming of slaves and the legalization of plunder, have been the growth of new hostility to the Union, and an important and obvious vindication to the world of the motives of the South and the virtues of her cause.

Regarding the condition of events in which this record closes; the broad lustre of victories covering the space of so many months; the numbers of our forces in the field, unequalled at any other period of the war; and the spirit animated by the recollections of victorious arms and stung by the fresh cruelties of an atrocious enemy, we may well persuade ourselves that there is no such word as "fail" in this struggle. Even beneath the pall of disaster, there is no place for such a word. The banners of the Confederacy do not bear the mottoes and devices of a doubtful contest. That brave phrase we may apply to ourselves, which is the law of progress and success; which summons the energies of mankind and works out the problems of human existence; which is at once an expression of the will of the Creator and the power of the creature; and which beautifully harmonizes the dispensations of Providence with the agency of men-"FORTUNA FORTIBUS."