The suspense, with all its party exaggerations, is now at an end. The Legislature of the United States is settled for two years, the Executive for four. The men are already named, who are to impress a direction on one of the critical periods of human history and during the lull which intervenes between their appointment and their action, while their purposes are taking silent shape in their minds, the hour is favourable for an estimate of their position and probable policy.

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Not for the first time,-perhaps for the last,-the terrible problem of Slavery, long the secret haunt, has become the open battle-field of American politics. In the recent strife of parties, this topic furnished the sole issue to be tried. In place of the delicate silence, usually enforced by the code of democratic politeness, towards the "peculiar institution," the journals, the halls, the "stumps," have exhausted the resources of political eloquence in its attack and defence. This public discussion even in Congress, of a subject long sealed-up under official and popular prohibition, is regarded by many simple-minded persons as a cheering sign that "the question is making way." They remember the time when a profound unconsciousness of this evil seemed to possess the country,-when might read through the whole literature of the Union (advertisements excepted) without suspecting the existence of a slave, or when the right of petition and the liberty of debate were refused at Washington to the hopes and conscience of the North. Comparing this unhealthy suppression with the free speech of the past summer, they celebrate the dawn and anticipate the victory, of the daylight now let in. Alas! they forget that the silent and suspended interval of every strife is simply the hour of watchful equipoise, while each combatant can barely hold his own: and that when the shout is first raised, it only means that one of the foes feels himself strong enough to rush upon the other, and tells not whether the advance be from the evil or the good. In the present instance, what is it that has broken the ominous silence? Is it that the reforming spirit has recovered its feet and renewed the fight? Is it not rather that the oppressor's fear is gone, and he exchanges his dumb feint for loud audacity? For awhile the South was content with stopping the mouth of the New-England States but now she prefers to speak out for herself, and cane the bare head of Senatorial reply. The debate in Congress has arisen, not in concession to Northern rights, but in the service of Southern treachery and aggression,-to legalise a breach of public faith and force the stipulated limits of slavery. It only proves, we fear, that shame has been cast aside; and that the time is past when mere words on the floor of the House are terrible.

The Englishman, having once upon a time paid twenty millions to redeem his negroes, and being moreover a decent Christian, never doubts that slavery is a doomed institution, and habitually speaks as if it were nearly worn out. He resents it as a reflection both on the efficacy of his own good example and on the Providence of the world, if you hint that this iniquity may yet have its lease renewed. All his strongest feelings and most fixed ideas render him inaccessible to such an apprehension his instincts of justice, his political economy, his respect for Brother Jonathan who thrashed him and set up for himself, his admiration of Washington and the great Republic, his trust in the veracity of their declaration "All men are born free and equal,"-combine to assure him, that, somehow or other, emancipation cannot be far off. The faith in Right which this opinion involves,-the slowness to believe in any triumph of Wrong,-we honour in the highest degree; and we accept with intense conviction their predictions as to the ultimate issues of human things. But "the end is not yet;" nor are the times and the seasons" to be ascertained by the justest light of faith and sentiment. The proximate Future is determined by the recent Past: and if historical prevision is attainable at all, it can only be by carefully laying down the lines of tendency that run through the present century and tracing whither they converge. There is an abusive reliance on Eternal Rectitude which makes good men blind to the real forces of human wickedness and incredulous of the possible vitality of wrong. They talk about "trust in a principle." But the best "principle" in the world is not alive; and will effect just nothing at all, if let alone, or merely blazoned forth in speech and print. Not till it gets hold of living men and works itself out at their finger-ends, not till it passes from abstract to concrete, from moral to material, is the smallest hope to be entertained of it. We know not which is most to be deplored, in this matter of American Slavery; the conservative quietude which is content to invoke the influence of "truth and time;"-or the abolitionist repudiation of "political action." Busy falsehood will do more, we fear, in the briefest "time," than idle "truth" in an eternity. And in dealing with an evil subsisting by artifice of law, strengthened by constitutional compact, and penetrating the entire policy of the State, to renounce "political action" seems very like objecting to "medical action" in a case of poisoning, or typographical action" in confutation of a book. The plea that every resort to the ballot-box implies allegiance to a constitution which recognises slavery, is so puerile, that we presume there is some other than this ostensible ground,--some local difficulty-some unexpressed antipathy, at the base of this extra

ordinary resolve. We rejoice to observe that the present crisis has emancipated some of the noblest of a noble band from a scruple so disabling. For the personal devotedness and heroism of many Abolitionists, and for the genius and accomplishments of some, we avow the highest admiration: and in the stern work of awakening the public conscience and baffling every hope of a hush-up, they have done good service. But the problem which they start they do not help to solve. To the foreigner their public organs are repulsive from their violence. To the statesman their programme of "immediate emancipation" is absurd to begin with, and becomes mere trifling at the end of twenty years. To the moralist, their refusal to mediate between the inherited evil and the desired escape,-their short-cut through all sympathy with the slaveholders' difficulty,-must appear a virtual confession of incapacity to deal with the elements of a vast and complicated question. We are far from admitting the assertion that they have retarded the solution of the great problem: but their function as a party is to supply rather incentives to the conflict than wisdom to achieve the victory.

To judge of the prospects of American Slavery, it is necessary to watch the changes it has undergone, in area, in population, in strength of economical interest, in hold on political party and social opinion, during the last seventy years.

During the war of Independence, there was no State whose soil was without its bondsmen. But that struggle awakened sentiments which put slavery to the blush: and as early as 1783, the phrase in the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, "All men are born free and equal," was declared, in the Supreme Court at Boston, to bar slave-holding in that State. The judges of New Hampshire attributed to the same words the effect of securing freedom to every child subsequently born. The example spread immediately to Connecticut and Rhode Island. Before 1790, the further introduction of slaves had been prohibited in five other States, including Virginia and Maryland, and provision had been made in Pennsylvania and New York and New Jersey for the exemption from bondage of all future-born persons. Every where, except in South Carolina and Georgia, the tendency declared itself against Slavery: but nowhere was the "institution" entirely absent. In this early and mixed state of things, the social colouring was much more homogeneous than we are apt to imagine: and a later season was required to bring out the distinctive shades. Throwing back, however, into the servile territory the States which, like Virginia, did not follow up their good beginnings, and claiming as free soil only those that consummated their emancipative acts, we find that a survey of the Union in its first years would yield the following

result. Of the whole area of the country, 403,000 square miles were free soil, and 385,000 slave soil. At present, the slave area contains 929,000 square miles; the free, 643,000. The slaveholders' portion has thus increased from less than 49 per cent to more than 59 per cent of the whole.

The number of slaves at the two ends of the same period affords another point of comparison. It will yield, however, no just inference, unless we bear in mind two important facts: (1) that by the measures taken in the Northern States, 120,000 negroes were emancipated in the first twenty years, and thus withdrawn, with their increase, from the slave-census; and (2) that since the cessation in 1808 of the external slave-trade the servile class has been restricted to natural increase, while the white population has received immense accessions from immigration. Of the magnitude of this element some idea may be formed from the return, in the tables of 1850, of nearly two millions and a half of foreign-born persons living in the States. These are most powerful causes, thinning and excluding the one class, attracting the other, for the last half-century. The small impression they have jointly produced on the relative numbers of slaves and whites* is truly remarkable. The former amounted in 1790 to 697,900 out of 3,870,400, or 18 per cent. In 1850, they numbered 3,204,300 out of 22,757,400, or above 14 per cent and were the foreign-born actual immigrants then living thrown out of the account, the percentage would rise to 156. Thus the relative magnitude of the evil is but little changed since the time when the Confederation was fresh and strong in common sentiment and distinctly tending to a common policy on this very matter. So little is this now the case, that for the purposes of this question the States divide themselves into two camps: and the difficulty arising from the increased number of slaves in the South is scarcely alleviated by the preponderance of the other race in the North. The absolute danger and embarrassment of the problem, no one can doubt, have incalculably increased, and are yearly increasing, with the growing mass of servitude. Were it the immediate interest, and the unanimous will of the proprietors to have only free labour on their estates next year, it would be a much more anxious thing to effect the change than at any date during the last sixty years.

But unfortunately, vast economical interests have grown up, which since the last century have given to the system a tena

* We neglect in this calculation the free coloured people: the census of 1790 not enumerating them; their later numbers consisting of people directly transferred from the one status to the other, and so vitiating the comparison; and the whole class being too small materially to affect the result (about 430,000 in 1850).

city altogether new. At the time of the Union, Georgia and South Carolina were the only States yielding tropical products, and demanding African labour. Rice and cotton, raised on low-lying lands under a temperature ranging from 80° upwards, require for their culture a latitude not higher than the limit between the Carolinas, and a human constitution more patient of heat than the Anglo-Saxon. Had these States, with their present limits, been cut off by sea or desert from the South and West, their power to retard the incipient tendency to emancipation would have been only temporary. For awhile, no doubt, the stimulus imparted to cotton-cultivation by the invention of the saw-gin, would still have operated to enhance the value and tighten the chains of the slave. But as soon as the plantations had obtained their complement of hands, the question would have returned, whether the work might not be got out of the negroes as free labourers: and it is conceivable that, in the face of an overwhelming preponderance of social sentiment against slavery, and under conditions thus brought into analogy to those of our West Indian islands, the experiment might have long preceded ours. But the gigantic expansion of the annual cotton export from zero (for up to 1790 not a bag had yet been shipped) to twelve hundred millions of pounds could not expend itself in crowding the fields of the old Atlantic coast. Around the Gulf of Mexico were adjacent lands, practically unlimited, eminently favourable to tropical products, and politically within easy reach of the Republic's ambition. In 1803, the acquisition of Louisiana more than doubled the whole Union at a stroke, and furnished lands on which the sugar-cane would grow. Florida, annexed in 1821, and Texas in 1845, opened new fields of the richest promise. The inevitable dispersion of labour drawn off to till the fresh territories, reproduced all the conditions which give strength to slavery. A sparse population, under a burning heaven and on fertile plains inviting occupation, will toil for others only under compulsion: and where combination of labour is needed to reclaim the wilderness and raise the crop, the importation of slaves will be profitable. Hence a sudden enhancement of the market-value of a gang: and the rapid development of an internal slave-trade, transporting the surplus hands from the middle States to the unbroken fields of the South. The operation of this cause in reanimating the slave-power where it was nearly spent, and in converting Virginia especially from an agricultural into a "breeding" state, is familiar to every reader of Mrs. Stowe; and speaks to the eye in the statistics of the last twenty or thirty years. While the number of slaves has been comparatively stationary in the old States in which they are "raised," it has doubled, trebled,