"gazetteers as fast as they were printed. The city of New "York began already to feel itself the London of the New "World, and to calculate how many years must elapse before "it would be the London of the World.

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"The South meanwhile was depressed and anxious. Cotton "was down, tobacco was down. Corn, wheat and pork were "down. For several years the chief products of the South "had either been inclining downward, or else had risen in price too slowly to make up for the (alleged) increased price "of the commodities which the South was compelled to buy. "Few new towns changed the Southern map. Charleston languished, or seemed to languish, certainly did not keep pace with New York, Boston and Philadelphia. No Cincin"nati of the South became the world's talk by the startling rapidity of its growth. No Southern river exhibited at every bend and coyne of vantage a rising village. No "Southern mind, distracted with the impossibility of devising "suitable names for a thousand new places per annum, fell "back in despair upon the map of the old world, and selected "at random any convenient name that presented itself, bestow"ing upon clusters of log huts such titles as Utica, Rome, Pa"lermo, Naples, Russia, Egypt, Madrid, Paris, Elba and "Berlin. No Southern commissioner, compelled to find names "for a hundred streets at once, had seized upon the letters of "the alphabet and the figures of arithmetic, and called the "avenues A, B, C and D, and, instead of naming his cross "streets, numbered them."

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For forty years the North reaped the fruits of partial legislation, while the South tasted the bitterness of oppression. The shoemakers, the iron men, the sailmakers, and the cotton and woolen spinners in the North clamoured for protection against their English, Swedish and Russian competitors, and easily obtained it. The South paid duties upon all articles that the tariff kept out of the country; but these duties, instead of going into the treasury as revenue, went into the purses of manufacturers as bounty. After paying this tribute

money to the North, the South had then to pay her quota for the support of the government. The North, for there was perfect free trade between the States, had a preference over all the world for its wares in the markets of the South. This preference amounted to 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 per cent., and even more, according to the article and the existing tariff. It extended over a country having twelve millions of customers. The sum of the Yankee profits out of the tariff was thus enormous. Had the South submitted to the "Morrill tariff," it would have exacted from her something like one hundred million dollars as an annual tribute to the North. But submission has some final period, and the South has no longer a lot in the legislation at Washington.

In the tariff controversy of 1831-2, we find the premonitions of the present revolution. It is a curious circumstance that in the excitement of that period some medals were secretly struck, bearing the inscription, "John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy." The name of the new power was correctly told. But the times were not ripe for a declaration of Southern independence, and even the public opinions of Mr. Calhoun resisted the suggestion of a dissolution of the Union.

The "nullification" doctrine of the statesman of North Carolina is one of the most interesting political studies of America; for it illustrates the long and severe contest in the hearts of the Southern people between devotion to the Union and the sense of wrong and injustice. Mr. Calhoun either did not dare to offend the popular idolatry, or was sincerely attached to the Union; but at the same time he was deeply sensible of the oppression it devolved upon the South. Nullification was simply an attempt to accommodate these two facts. It professed to find a remedy for the grievances of States without disturbing the Union; and the nullification of an unconstitutional law within the local jurisdiction of a State was proposed as the process for referring the matter to some constitutional tribunal other than the Supreme court, whose judgments should

be above all influences of political party. It was a crude scheme, and only remarkable as a sacrifice to that peculiar idolatry in American politics which worshipped the name of the Union.

The present President of the Southern Confederacy—Mr. Jefferson Davis-has referred to the political principles of Mr. Calhoun in some acute remarks made on the interesting occasion of his farewell to the old Senate at Washington. He

says:

"A great man, who now reposes with his fathers, and who has often been arraigned for a want of fealty to the Union, advocated the doctrine of nullification because it preserved the Union. It was because of his deep-seated attachment to the Union; his determination to find some remedy for existing ills short of a severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to the other States, that Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of Nullification, which he proclaimed to be peaceful; to be within the limits of State power, not to disturb the Union, but only to be a means of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the States for their judgment."

In defending in the speech referred to the action of the State of Mississippi in separating herself from the Union, Mr. Davis remarks with justice, that Secession belongs to another class of remedies than that proposed by the great South Carolinian. The Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, long the political text of the South, bore the seeds of the present revolution, for they laid the foundation for the right of secession in the sovereignty of the States; and Mr. Calhoun's deduction from them of his doctrine of nullification was narrow and incomplete.

But we shall not renew here vexed political questions. We have referred at some length to the details of the old United States tariffs and the incidental controversies of parties, because we shall find here a peculiar development of the political ideas of the North. To all the ingenious philosophy of State rights; to the disquisitions of Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Tyler; to

the discussions of the moral duties of the government, the North had but one invariable reply, and that was the sovereignty of the will of the majority. It recognized no sovereign but numbers, and it was thought to be a sufficient defence of the tariff and other legislation unequal to the South that it was the work and will of the majority.

It was during the agitation of the tariff that the consolidation school became firmly established. Mr. Webster, the mouth piece of the manufacturing interest in the North, attempted by expositions of the Constitution to represent the government as a central organization of numbers, without any feature of originality to distinguish it from other rude democracies of the world. In his attempt to simplify it, he degraded it to the common-place of simple democracy, and insulted the wisdom of those who had made it. The political opinions of Mr. Webster were summed up in what he arrogantly called "Four Exhaustive Propositions." These propositions were famous in the newspapers of his day, and may be reproduced here as a very just summary of the political ideas of the North:

MR. WEBSTER'S FOUR EXHAUSTIVE PROPOSITIONS.

1. That the Constitution of the United States is not a "league, confederacy or compact between the people of the "several States in their sovereign capacity; but a government "founded on the adoption of the people, and creating direct "relations between itself and individuals."

2. "That no State authority has power to dissolve these re"lations; that nothing can dissolve them but revolution; and "that, consequently, there can be no such thing as secession "without revolution."

3. "That there is a supreme law, consisting of the Consti"tution of the United States, acts of Congress passed in pur"suance of it, and treaties; and that in cases not capable of assuming the character of a suit in law or equity, Congress "must judge of and finally interpret this supreme law, as

"often as it has occasion to pass acts of legislation; and in 66 cases capable of assuming the character of a suit, the Su"preme Court of the United States is the first interpreter."

4. "That the attempt by a State to abrogate, annul or nul"lify an act of Congress, or to arrest its operation within her "limits, on the ground that, in her opinion, such law is uncon"stitutional, is a direct usurpation on the just powers of the general government, and on the equal rights of other States; a plain violation of the Constitution; and a proceeding essentially revolutionary in its character and tendency.'

It is in the light of these propositions that the present assertion of the independence of the South is denounced by the North as rebellion. And it is with reference to them and their savage doctrine of the power of numbers in a union of sovereign States, that we may in turn challenge the world to declare if the South in this struggle is not enlisted in the cause of free government, which is more important to the world than "the Union" which has disappeared beneath the wave of history.

In the present war the North has given faithful and constant indications of its dominant idea of the political sovereignty, as well as the military omnipotence, of numbers. It is absurd to refer to the person of Abraham Lincoln as the political master of the North; he is the puppet of the vile despotism that rules by brute numbers. We have already referred to some of the characteristics of such despotism. We shall see others in this war in the timidity and subservient hesitation to which such a government reduces party minorities and in that destitution of honour which invariably characterizes the many-headed despotism of the people.

Mr. Lincoln was elected on a principle of deadly antagonism to the social order. His party found him subservient to their passions, and with the President in the hollow of their hand, for two years they have reigned triumphantly in the Congress at Washington. Such has been the stupendous lunacy and