the great popular demonstration which the North has just achieved. The pledges required are variously stated: Mr. Stephens of Georgia, the leader of the moderate or Unionist party in the State, has indicated two,-that the Republicans shall disavow, and secure the repeal of, the Personal Liberty Acts of the Northern States, which have practically prevented the rendition of slaves under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and that Congress shall admit, or at least not seek to deny, the "perfect equality between all the States, and the citizens of all the States in the Territories;" in other words, admit slave property into the Territories. To these conditions some of the mediating States add the condition that no further step shall be taken in repealing the Slavery laws of Columbia, the district subject to the absolute rule of Congress; while others, again, demand that the initial steps already taken in that direction shall be retraced. It is generally rumoured, on the Republican side, that the first condition as to the Fugitive Slave Law and the Personal Liberty Acts will be more or less complied with; that as to the second, the Republicans would accept a new Missouri compromise, dividing the Territories again by the old line extended to the Pacific, which is to be a permanent northern limit to Slavery; and as to the last, all action will be waived for the present.

Now, recalling that the one principle to which Mr. Lincoln has repeatedly pledged himself, and on which alone the Republican party has any logical basis at all, is the principle of strictly limiting the area of Slavery by all constitutional means, we can easily lay down the utmost limits within which Republican concession is possible without an act of party suicide.

It cannot be denied, we think, that the constitution gave the South, under the second section of its fourth article, a legal claim to some Fugitive Slave Law.* It can still less be denied that free States, profoundly impressed with the moral iniquity of Slavery, cannot, with either moral or legal good effect, be compelled to deliver back to Slavery fugitives who have thrown themselves on their generosity, justice, and hospitality. There is a point where positive law, coming into collision with moral law, is necessarily paralysed, and cannot be enforced without exciting violence and endangering revolution. At the same time, it must be remembered that the Personal Liberty Acts of the Northern States are not in themselves otherwise than constitutional evasions of a constitutional law. They are, in form, securities against the injustice which has, once at least since

* Article iv. sec. 2 (3). "No person held to service or labour in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due.”

1850, been really committed, of the apprehension of a free Northern citizen under the false charge of his being a fugitive slave. In effect, no doubt they do render the identification of fugitive slaves so difficult as to be almost impracticable, but they do so under the not purely imaginary pretext of preventing a wrong to freemen. But if the Southern States would only accept, as they were quite inclined to do in 1850, pecuniary compensation for these fugitives from justice, these artificial obstructions need not be thrown in their way. This is the proposal of the New York Times, and we confess it seems to us quite satisfactory. The constitutional claim of the South would be satisfied, nor could the Republicans fairly object that the slave-owner's demand being in principle unjust, no compensation is due to him. For if the Republicans wish to have the protection of the constitution, they are clearly bound to abide by the spirit of its provisions even when they think them unjust, and they can only do so in this case in this way. It is impossible to enforce, for any length of time, the rigid execution of a hateful law in a sovereign State; but it is not impossible to compensate the injured party by the payment of damages. On the other hand, the South could not refuse the offer. In most of the Slave States the statutes authorise State compensation to the owner of any slave whose life has been forfeited to the law. Among the items of State-expenditure in the Slave States, "indemnity for slaves executed" will be found a very frequent one; and States which compel the owner to forfeit his property, at a fair price, for the safety of the individual State, cannot refuse to do as much for the peace of the Union.

The second guarantee demanded of the harmless intentions of the Republican party, namely, that they will admit the equal rights of all kinds of property in the Territories which are subject to the jurisdiction of Congress,-is one which, conceded in any form, will be the death-blow to the present organisation of the party. There is no point on which Mr. Lincoln himself is more deeply pledged. "I am impliedly if not expressly pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit Slavery in all the United-States Territories," he said, in answer to Mr. Douglas in 1858. And, he added, that of course he was equally opposed to the acquisition of fresh territory, "unless Slavery is first prohibited therein." Moreover, the whole existence of the party depends on this principle. Once admit the equal rights of all kinds of property in the Territories, and it will be impossible to refuse admission to any new Slave State on the ground of its Slavery:-in short, the principle of strictly limiting the area of Slavery is cast to

the winds. And a second Missouri Compromise would, if possible, be still more discrediting to the Republicans than the abrogation of the principle altogether. After the disgraceful failure of the first Compromise; after the proof thus given that at the first convenient opportunity all such compromises would be coolly set aside; after the experience the Republicans have gained that Slavery-extension is greatly to be dreaded in the South, but not in the North, and that if they are to limit the area of Slavery at all, they must especially guard the power to do so in the South,-it would be pure political suicide to make any concession on this head.

Of course no active steps can be taken while the Republicans remain in a minority in both Houses of Congress. But inaction does not imply concession. The only danger the party has to fear is disunion. And it would on every account be far better to permit the secession of South Carolina, and of all who are inclined to join her,—to let them try the exceedingly dangerous experiment of setting up for themselves,-than to compromise all the future action of the party by cutting the ground of principle on which they stand from under them. Mr. Buchanan has said in his Message, that he shall not employ force to prevent secession. Mr. Lincoln need only follow out the same policy, and instruct his followers, while attempting no active measures, so long as they continue in a minority, to make no damaging concessions. Whenever that minority is turned into a majority, more ought to be done. And the abolition of Slavery in the Congressional district of Columbia, as it is the mildest and most unexceptionable, ought probably to be the first step.

A heavy responsibility now rests upon the Republican party; and the eyes of all Europe are on them. The recent Presidential election may, we may well hope, be a turning-point in the history of the Union, if that party are courageous and firm in the discharge of their political duty. For the first time, since the dissolution of the old Federalist party of General Hamilton, has a political organisation in the United States been explicitly based on a weighty political principle. For the first time since the declaration of Independence, has it been based on one that is not only weighty, but noble, capable of arousing the deepest enthusiasm in the popular mind. Let the Republicans remember that they are the servants of that principle, not its patrons, and have neither power nor right to compromise it as they please. If they wish to wipe out the disgraceful stains which the administration of Polk, of Fillmore, of Pierce, and of Buchanan have left upon the history of the Union; if they

wish to redeem their country from the discredit which the annexation of Texas, the Mexican war, the civil war in Kansas, the attempts on Cuba, Mexico, and Nicaragua, the official blindness of the Executive to the Slave-trade, the conspiracy to legalise Slavery in the Territories, and the gross corruption of recent governments, have attached to the Government of the United States,-let them remember that success, least of all speedy success, is not the touchstone of true service; that they will have done far more for the nation by keeping themselves perfectly free to use every constitutional power which the Union possesses for the insulation of Slavery, even though years should elapse before they can take a single effective step for that end, -than if, by patching up a shameful reconciliation with the Southern States, they win for Mr. Lincoln the questionable praise of being quite as safe a President as Mr. Buchanan, and the unquestionable shame of having sacrificed, for the sake of an unreal armistice, the only condition which can ever secure a genuine Union,-which can ever cause the States of America to be United at heart as well as in name,-which can ever cement them by any deeper tie than the coarse compromises of external interests and common fears.

BOOKS OF THE QUARTER SUITABLE FOR READING

SOCIETIES.

The Conduct of Life. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. Author's Edition. Smith and Elder.

[The nine essays which compose this work by no means deserve the sweeping censure they have received. They are chaotic, and their philosophy, or pseudo-philosophy, is unsocial, but the shrewd rugged Emersonian thought is not enfeebled.]

The Genesis of the Earth and of Man; or, the and the Antiquity and Races of Mankind. Stuart Poole. Williams and Norgate.

History of Creation,
Edited by Reginald

[The object of this volume is to establish that the discoveries of geological and palæontological science are not inconsistent with Scripture. The author believes that the first chapters of Genesis present a series of visions, in which successive epochs of creative power are exhibited to the eye of the seer. He also believes that the earth has been peopled from two separate stocks, and that there is distinct indication of this in the Bible. These conclusions are defended with much learning and some ingenuity.]

The Limits of Exact Science, as applied to History: an Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Cambridge. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley. Macmillan.

[One of Mr. Kingsley's ablest and finest essays. It is a protest against the attempt of the modern philosophies of history to teach us to look at "human beings rather as things than as persons," and at abstract laws "rather as persons than as things."]

On the Origin and Succession of Life on the Earth. By John Phillips, M.A. With Illustrations. Macmillan.

Romance of Natural History. By P. H. Gosse. Nisbet.

History of the United Netherlands, from the Death of William the Silent to the Death of Olden Barneveld. By J. Lothrop Motley. 2 vols. Murray.

Debates on the Grand Remonstrance, 1641: with an Introductory Essay on English Freedom under Plantagenet and Tudor Sovereigns. By John Forster. Murray.

History of the Venetian Republic. By W. G. Hazlitt. Smith and Elder.

The Origin and History of Language, based on Modern Researches. By F. W. Farrer, M.A. Murray.

The Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. Sydney Smith: a Selection of the most memorable Passages in his Writings and Conversation. Longmans.

[A good selection, making a most amusing book.]

Memoir of George Wilson, M.D. By his Sister, Jessie Aitken. Macmillan.

Life and Times of Edmund Burke. By Thomas Macknight. Chapman and Hall.