that no form of government, except unlimited, hereditary despotism, pure and simple, is possible, consistently with the rights of man, the nature of society, or the will of God. The right of five millions to despise and subvert the rights of twenty-two millions-is the right of two to treat eight in the same way-and still more clearly the right of the stronger of the two to treat the weaker in the same way. It is the dogmatic establishment of force, as the only rule of right; the dogmatic establishment of human passion and caprice as the sole direction of force; the dogmatic establishment of uncontrollable violence, as the final result of all human experience, and all possible human attainment! And we confidently assert, that it is impossible to acknowledge the right of secession, by the exercise of which every rebel state commenced the disintegration of American society; without terminating, as a moral result, in simple atheism, as to any assignable relation of God to human society; and without terminating in zero-nihil, anarchy, the utter impossibility of society, as the result, both scientific and practical, of human rights and human authority, brought face to face. This is the residuum we get, when we suppress the sublime idea of duty, in the maturing of our principles, and the ordering of our lives, touching these vast subjects. And when fraud, and terror, and violence, are the means by which the first stepthe secession-is taken; the case presented is, not a delusion, but a conspiracy; and the horror of its conclusion, is responsive to the atrocity of its beginning.

It is in vain that the force of these truths is sought to be broken, or evaded, by claiming that under our system of government the paramount allegiance of the citizen is due to the particular state, and not to the nation; and is due to the nation at all only through the state; and only so long as the state shall require the citizen to render it. Of the three propositions which make up this argument, and terminate in the conclusion that each state may secede when it sees fit, the two former might possibly be true, while the third one, and the conclusion, would remain utterly false. If it were true that each state was sovereign and independent before it became one of the constituent elements of the nation; and further true, that its sovereign act adhering to the nation, was

the only original ground of the allegiance of its citizens to the nation; that sovereign act, when performed, is functus officio, final, and irrevocable by any subsequent act of the particular state; and whatever allegiance was due to it, is irrevocably transferred to the nation; and every attempt of the particular state to undo its former sovereign act by secession, or otherwise, is not only immoral and traitorous, but is utterly absurd, seeing that its last act of paramount sovereignty, was to merge that separate sovereignty in the paramount national sovereignty. But both the preceding statements of the proposition on which the secession conclusion restsare utterly destitute of truth, whether historical, legal, or theoretical. There is not a state that is, or ever was, in the American Union, that ever existed for one moment, as a separate state clothed with paramount sovereignty; not one that ever existed as a state at all, otherwise than as one of the United States; just as there never was any such nation as the United States, except as constituted of sovereign states—those very states that issued unitedly the Declaration of American Independence in 1776, together with the numerous territories which have been admitted into the Union as states, by act of Congress, at their request. These facts are just as certain, as that there is an American people in the world. And the existing constitution of the United States, being based upon these undeniable historic truths, recognizes them all—is made expressly in the sense of all of them and of the consequences which flow from them, and is neither intelligible nor capable of execution, except on the supposition of their reality. That constitution is on its face, and in its form, a government not a treaty. It is one nation, settling its institutions by the will of its people; not many nations, arranging terms and conditions of peace, amity, and alliance. By it, the peculiar nature, and the boundaries of the national powers and duties, are determined; and the peculiar relations of the nation and the states, to each other, and to the people, are defined. And settling forever every question upon which such pretensions as we are now exposing, could be rationally based, it expressly declares that constitution, and the laws enacted, and the treaties made in pursuance of it, to be the supreme law of the land-naming state constitutions and laws as nullities when

they conflict with this supreme law; expressly prohibits to the states, the exercise of those functions which are inseparable from supreme sovereignty-such as the power to declare war, to make peace, to coin money, to make treaties-and such like; and expressly vests these, and similar powers inseparable from paramount sovereignty, in the government of the United States. It seems to us that nothing could be clearer. And yet this pretext of paramount state authority-shown to be totally absurd in its conclusion, even if its main terms were true, and those main terms shown to be totally false; has probably done more harm in confusing the minds of men, in becoming an instrument in the hands of despotic and unscrupulous local power, in furnishing to the timid and time-serving a decent excuse, and in affording unreasonable scope to state pride and local attachments; than could be conceived by those who have not had occasion to observe its immense diffusion, and the confidence with which it is always urged. From it also springs the chief pretext used by disloyal teachers of morals in the loyal states, who as a body are fearfully responsible for the errors and sins of the times, whereby the church of God is attempted to be silenced, as the moral guide of mankind. They put it thus: the whole question of this civil war, is merely one of construction of the federal constitution; does it or does it not allow secession? which being a question purely of political criticism, concerning which the church does not know the mind of God, has no authority from him to speak. These evils the triumph of the nation should cure, and put an end to the doctrine and practice of secession, and to the follies and miseries which follow in its course. But that very triumph may lead to an opposite evil, not less surely fatal at last, than secession itself; and means have already been resorted to, in the alleged impatience to hurry that triumph, and make it signal, which may make the effects of that evil both sudden and vehement. It is as strictly true that there is no American nation except as it is constituted of these states, as it is that there are no American states except as they constitute this nation. The nation has no more right to expel, or destroy a state, or usurp its rights, than a state has to expel or secede from the nation, or usurp its rights. In one respect the power of the state is more plenary, than

that of the nation; for the nation has no power, under its present constitution, except what that constitution gives, and what is incidental thereto; whereas all the powers inherent in society are given by the state constitutions, except so far as, by themselves, or by the federal constitution, any powers are withheld. While their sovereignty is not paramount, as we have shown, their scope is far wider and more varied. This is our system: the wisest, the noblest, the nearest to the double perfection of immense public force, united with the highest personal security and freedom-ever produced in the mere course of human progress. There are ideas afloat among eminent leaders of the party now in power-which are directly subversive of this system of government; directly incompatible with that indispensable element of it, which is contributed by the power, the dignity, the sovereignty, and the security of the states. And these ideas have to a large extent, hardened into acts of Congress-and matured into avowed principles, for the conduct of the war; while others, clearly related to them, are habitually advocated in both houses of Congress, in the most important state papers, and in many ably-conducted newspapers. The triumph of these ideas, is a wholly different thing from the triumph of the nation in this war. The nation may, we trust will, triumph in this war, in defiance of these ideas. But there will remain the necessity of another national triumph over these ideasno matter in what posture they may then be found; or the nation must take the risk of a future career radically incompatible with the federal constitution; and therefore radically different from all its past career.

It is now well known that the outbreak of the civil war, preceded by successive acts of secession on the part of many states, had long been contemplated, and awaited only a favorable conjuncture of affairs. It was a conspiracy, matured through a long course of years, pointing to the division of the nation, and the erection of a new nation intended to include, if possible, all the slave states, and to extend itself indefinitely south and west over the Spanish and Indian country, and seaward over as many of the West India islands as might be possible. There can be no doubt, that it was designed to make negro slavery universal in the new nation; but that is widely

different from saying, that slavery was the original, or only serious, cause of the conspiracy; widely different from saying, that the body of the slaveholders favored the conspiracy before it broke out into secession, or favored the secession because the secession was on account of slavery; widely different from saying, that slavery must be destroyed, as a condition precedent to the restoration of the Union. So far as the slave states may have had any idea of the insecurity of slave property, under the federal constitution, arising from the long, persistent, and deeply offensive movements against it at the North, beginning with the opposition to the admission of Missouri in 1819, and extending over forty years, to the accidental triumph of the republican party in 1860; those states had resented, and resisted, and triumphed over those northern movements, with great political skill and hardihood, and a growing extravagance in their demands-which rendered it impossible they could have doubted that the republican triumph of 1860, was accidental and temporary, perfectly controllable during the four years of power by that party, if the South had not seceded, and politically certain of being reversed in 1864, by any one of numerous possible combinations of the whole fifteen slave states, with a certain number of the nineteen free states. What is very certain is, that the American people have never set the seal of their approbation, to the extreme demands made in the interest, either of slavery or anti-slavery; nor do we believe they ever will do either. They rebuked, and for the time crushed, the party that seduced the administration of Mr. Buchanan, besides many other iniquities, into the support of the wildest pro-slavery claims; and, whoever is observant of the effects produced on the public mind, everywhere, by Mr. Lincoln's proclamations of September 22d and 24th, 1862, and January 1st, 1863, and the various acts of the Congress which has just terminated, which sustain the principles of those proclamations-can hardly doubt the conclusion which the American people will announce in 1864. This, at least, is certain-that neither the union of the states, under any constitution whatever, nor the preservation of peace, liberty, security, public order, under the present constitution, is permanently possible-after the American people shall have deliberately approved the abuse of the national.