if either party were decidedly victorious, and in a position to dictate terms; but seem almost to defy a settlement when each belligerent is, or fancies itself, fully a match for its antagonist.

On the other hand, and in order to show that a compromise would be wise and is very probable, considerations as numerous, and apparently more cogent, are alleged. The conquest of the South by the North would seem to be impossible, and we believe is felt to be so by all whose passions have not blinded their perceptions. Any thing short of conquest will not meet the ostensible purpose of the war; and for no other or minor purpose does it seem rational or decent that so deplorable a conflict should be prolonged. The resources of the North, however wasted or mismanaged, are incomparably and incontestibly greater than those of their antagonists, whom they may injure and impoverish frightfully, but cannot subdue. Now to injure and impoverish gratuitously twelve millions of men who were recently fellow-citizens, and who have hitherto been, and must again become, clients, customers, and debtors, appears too foolish a course for any but men irrationally angry to pursue. The South ask only to be suffered to secede in peace, and to govern themselves in their own way; and will of course be ready to lay down their arms as soon as this privilege is granted: in the North there must be thousands-and these amongst the richest and the wisest men-who see that it must come to this, and think it much the best that it should be allowed to come to this

at once. The expenses of the war are frightful; the taxation that it will necessitate must be burdensome in the extreme; and the Western States abominate a protectionist tariff nearly as much as the Eastern ones abhor direct imposts. The losses and sufferings of the merchants of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, and of those who are dependent upon them, are grievous and unparalleled, and must continue so while the war lasts. In addition to these considerations, there are two contingencies which may any day bring about a crisis and an abrupt termination of hostilities. A series of discomfitures so vexatious and disheartening as to discourage the Federalists, yet not so signal or disgraceful as to infuriate them and goad them to persistence, or a series of operations, or a period of feeble and tedious inaction, which shall impress on the public mind a general and disgustful conviction of the incapacity of the Federal Government or the gloomy prospects of the Federal cause,―may give courage to all the malcontents to speak their minds and to show their strength; and it may then appear that those really inclined for peace are in fact, and have long been, more numerous than those virulently bent on war, but have been bullied and terrified into acquiescence until now. Or, the proclamation of General Fre

mont, of unconditional emancipation to the slaves of rebel masters (that is, to nine-tenths of the whole number), if ratified and adopted by the Federal authorities, may awaken such Northern citizens as are still cool enough for reflection and regret to a conviction that the conflict is now assuming the gigantic dimensions, and involving the tremendous and incalculable consequences, of an Anti-Slavery struggle,-a situation which they did not foresee, and for which the great majority of them are assuredly not yet prepared. The recoil consequent upon finding themselves, by the mismanagement of incapable rulers and eager partisans, thus suddenly brought face to face with the immediate prospect of Negro insurrection, servile war, suspended cultivation, desolated territories, and the possibility of even worse calamities contingent upon the anarchy that would ensue, -may give them spirit to speak out at once, and compel the Government to offer terms of accommodation, before the policy just inaugurated can have spread, and while the probable issues of it are still preventible.

All these considerations seem to render the long continuance of the civil conflict extremely problematic. There is yet one other contingency to be adverted to, which is not wholly out of the question. The Washington Government from the very outset have spoken and acted towards this country with a degree of arrogance which almost implied that they had lost their heads, and were well enough inclined to provoke a quarrel. Hitherto we have made great allowance for natural irritation and excitement, and, we trust, shall continue to do so. But it may well be that the commanders of the United States navy, if they remain actuated by the same spirit, and proceed in the same cavalier fashion as heretofore in their blockading operations and their behaviour to British merchant-ships, may overstep the usages and amenities of civilised international practice in a measure which neither we nor France can overlook. In this case, though nothing would induce either Government to break or prohibit the blockade merely for their own convenience, both may find it necessary, for the protection and due rights of their own subjects, to place the blockading squadron under severe restrictions and under strong coercion, if not even to exact prompt reparation for unquestioned wrong. We sincerely trust that nothing of the sort may occur; but it would be idle to exclude such an event from our review of possible contingencies.

To sum up the whole "situation," as our neighbours would say, there is not much certainty and not much brightness in the prospect before us; but neither is it as gloomy as some would paint it. We do not believe the war will last long, and

we do not believe that the blockade will be strict. We expect that much cotton will filter through, and that all will be liberated before many months are over. Even if no American cotton reached this country, yet if we are convinced that none will reach us, high prices will attract sufficient quantities from other quarters to relieve us from an actual famine,-provided, that is, no artificial proceedings on the part of other Governments shall extract from us the supply we have secured. And if our manufacturers work short time soon enough and universally enough, there will be an ample amount of employment on the whole to afford two-thirds wages to the operative population. But if, relying on indefinite hopes, they should defer this needful precaution, and should use up their stock too rapidly, or disseminate it too unequally, we may endure much misery and some starvation. And if the Americans shall continue their strife with inveteracy and with obstinacy, and succeed among them in sealing up their production for the year, yet should be unable to persuade our merchants that such will be the case,prices will advance too slowly to attract from India the million. of bales that we require. And if, in addition to all this, France and America, or either of them, should, in defiance of political economy and regardless of cost, adopt contrivances and bounties to drain away from us a portion of our scanty stocks, then our condition may become very serious indeed. Such a combination of unfavourable possibilities, however, we feel bound to say, we see no reason for anticipating. But every thing is harassingly uncertain.

ART. X. THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION AT THE

PRESENT CRISIS.

Causes of the Civil War in America. By J. Lothrop Motley. Manwaring.

It is not at first easy for an ordinary Englishman to appreciate adequately the favourite arguments which the most cultivated and best American writers use at the present juncture. It seems to him that they are arguments befitting lawyers, not arguments befitting statesmen. They appear only to prove that a certain written document, called the Constitution of the United States, expressly forbids the conduct which the Southern States are consistently pursuing, and that therefore such conduct is culpable as well as illegal. Very few Englishmen will deny either the premiss or the conclusion considered in themselves. It is certain that the Constitution does forbid

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what the slave States are doing; it is equally certain, that their policy is as mean, as unjustifiable, and every way as discreditable, as was ever pursued by any public bodies equally powerful and equally cultivated. But nevertheless an argument from the mere letter of a written Constitution will hardly convince any Englishman. He knows that all written documents must be very meagre; that the best of them must often be unsatisfactory; that most of them contain many errors; that the best of them are remarkable for strange omissions; that all of them will fail utterly when applied to a state of things different from any which its authors ever imagined. The complexity of politics is thoroughly comprehended by every Englishman, the complexity of our history has engraved it on our mind; the complexity of our polity is a daily memento of it,— and no one in England will be much impressed by any arguments which tacitly assume that the limited clauses of an old State-paper can provide for all coming cases, and for ever regulate the future.

It is worth while, however, to examine the American Constitution at the present juncture. No remarkable aspect of the great events which are occurring among our nearest national kindred and our most important trading connexions in our own times, can be wisely neglected; and it will be easy to show that the Constitution of the United States is now failing from the necessary consequence of an inherent incradicable defect; that more than one of its thoughtful framers perceived that it must fail under similar circumstances; and that the irremediable results of this latent defect have been aggravated partly by the corruptions which the Constitution has contracted in the progress of time, and yet more by certain elaborate provisions which were believed to be the best attainable safeguards against analogous dangers and difficulties.

Like most of the great products of the Anglo-Saxon race, the American Constitution was the result of a pressing necessity, and was a compromise between two extreme plans for meeting that necessity. It was framed in a time of gloom and confusion. The "revolted colonies," as Englishmen then called them, had been successful in their revolt; but they had been successful in nothing else. They had thrown off the yoke of the English Government; but they had founded no efficient or solid government of their own. They had been united by a temporary common sentiment,-by a common antipathy to the interference of the mother country; but the binding efficacy of that feeling ceased when their independence of the mother country had been definitively recognised. Nor was there any other strong bond of union which could supply its place. The Ame

rican colonies had been founded by very different kinds of persons, at very different periods of English history. They had respectively taken the impress of the class of Englishmen who had framed them: Virginia had the mark of the aristocratic class; Massachusetts of the Puritan; Pennsylvania of the Quakers. The modern colonies of England are of a single type; they are founded by a single class, from a single motive. Those who now leave England are, with some exceptions, but still for the most part and as a rule, a rough and energetic race, who feel that they cannot earn as much money as they wish in England, and who hope and believe that they will be able to earn that money elsewhere. They are driven from home by the want of a satisfactory subsistence, and that subsistence is all they care or seek to find elsewhere. To every other class but this, England is too pleasant a residence for them to dream of leaving it for the antipodes. With our early colonies it was otherwise. When they were founded, England was a very unpleasant place for very many people. As long as the now-balanced structure of our composite society was in the process of formation, one class obtained a temporary ascendency at one time, and another class at another time. At each period they made England an uncomfortable place of residence for all who did not coincide in their notions of politics, and who would not subscribe to their tenets of religion. At such periods the dissident class threw off a swarm to settle in America; and thus our old colonies were first formed.

No one can be surprised that communities with such a beginning should have acquired strong antipathies to one another. Even at the present day, the antipathy of the inhabitants of South Carolina to the people of Boston, the dislike of Kentuckians to New Yorkers, has surprised attentive observers. But when their independence was first recognised, such feelings were infinitely more intense. The original founders of the colonies had hated one another at home. Those colonies were near neighbours in a rude country, and the occasional collision of petty interests had kept alive the original antipathy of each class to its antagonistic class, of each sect to its antagonistic sect. M. de Tocqueville remarked, that even in his time there was no national patriotism in America, but only a State patriotism; and though, in 1833, this remark was perhaps exaggerated, it would have been, fifty years before, only the literal expression of an indisputable fact. The name " American" had scarcely as yet any political signification,—it was a "geographical expression."

Grave practical difficulties of detail, too, oppressed the new community. The war with England had been commenced by a body calling itself a Congress, but very different from the ela