trast calculated to give pain. There has been in that country the utmost liberty to the white man, and bondage and degradation to the black man. Now rely upon it, that wherever Christianity lives and flourishes there must grow up from it, necessarily, a conscience hostile to any oppression and to any wrong; and therefore, from the hour when the United States' constitution was formed, so long has it left there this great evil-then comparatively small, but now so great-it left there seeds of that which an American statesman has so happily described, of that 'irrepressible conflict' of which now the whole world is the witness. It has been a common thing for men disposed to carp at the United States to point to this blot on their fair fame, and to compare it with the boasted declaration of freedom in their deed and Declaration of Independence. But we must recollect who sowed this seed of trouble, and how and by whom it has been cherished. I should like to read to you a paragraph from the instructions understood to have been given to the Virginian delegates to Congress, in the month of August, 1774, by Mr. Jefferson, who was perhaps the ablest man the United States had produced up to that time, and who was then actively engaged in its affairs, and who afterwards for two periods filled the office of president. He represented one of these very slave states, the State of Virginia, and he says:

'For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to avoid all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibition, and by imposing duties which might amount to prohibition, have hitherto been defeated by his majesty's negative, thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.'

I read this merely to show that two years before the declaration of independence was signed, Mr. Jefferson, acting on behalf of those he represented in Virginia, wrote that protest against the course of the English government, which prevented the colonists from abolishing the slave trade preparatory to the abolition of slavery itself. Well, the United States' constitution left the slave question for every state to manage for itself. It was a question too difficult to settle then, and apparently every man had the hope and belief that in a few years slavery itself would become extinct. Then there happened a great event in the annals of manufactures and commerce. It was discovered that in those states the article which we in this country now so much depend on, could be produced of the best quality necessary for manufacture, and at a moderate price. From that day to this the growth of cotton has increased there, and its consumption has increased here, and a value which no man dreamed of when Jefferson wrote that paper has been given to the slave and to slave industry. Thus it has grown up to that gigantic institution which now threatens either its own overthrow or the overthrow of that which is a million times more valuable, the United States of America.

The crisis which has now arrived was inevitable. I say that the conscience of the North, never satisfied with the institution of slavery, was constantly urging some men forward to take a more extreme view of the question; and there grew up naturally a section, it may not have been a very numerous one, in favour of the abolition of slavery. A great and powerful party resolved at least upon a restraint and a control of slavery, so that it should not extend beyond the states and the area which it now occupies. But if we look at the government of the United States almost ever since the formation of the union, we shall find the southern power has been mostly dominant there. If we take thirty-six years after the formation of the present constitution, I think about 1787, we shall find that for thirty-two of these years every president was a southern man; and if we take the period from 1828 until 1860 we

shall find that in every election for president the South voted in the majority.

We know what an election is in the United States for President of the Republic. There is a most extensive suffrage, and there is the ballot-box. The members of the House of Representatives are elected by the same suffrage, and generally they are elected at the same time. It is thus, therefore, almost inevitable that the House of Representatives is in accord in public policy with the president for the time being. Every four years there springs from the vote created by the whole people a president over that great nation. I think the world offers no finer spectacle than this, it offers no higher dignity, and there is no greater object of ambition on the political stage on which men are permitted to move.

You may point if you will to hereditary rulers, to crowns coming down through successive generations of the same family, to thrones based on prescription or on conquest, to sceptres wielded over veteran legions and subject realms; but to my mind there is nothing so worthy of reverence and obedience, and nothing more sacred, than the authority of the freely chosen by the majority of a great and free people; and if there be on earth and amongst men any right divine to govern, surely it rests with a ruler so chosen and appointed.

Last year the ceremony of this great election was gone through, and the South, which had been so long successful, found itself defeated. That defeat was followed instantly by secession, and insurrection, and war. In the multitude of articles which have been before us in the newspapers within the last few months I have no doubt you have seen it stated, as I have seen it, that this question was very much like that upon which the colonies originally revolted against the crown of England. It is amazing how little some newspaper writers know, or how little they think you know. When the war of Independence was begun in America, ninety years ago, there were no representatives there at all. The question then was, whether a ministry in Downing Street, and a corrupt and borough-mongering parliament, should continue to impose taxes

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upon three millions of English subjects, who had left their native shores and established themselves in North America. But now the question is not the want of representation, because, as is perfectly notorious, the South is not only represented, but is represented in excess, for, in distributing the number of representatives, which is done every ten years, three out of every five slaves are counted as freemen, and the number of representatives from the slave states is consequently so much greater than if the freemen, the white men only, were counted. From this cause the southern states have twenty members more in the House of Representatives than they would have if the members were apportioned on the same principle as in the northern free states. Therefore you will see at once that there is no comparison between the state of things when the colonies revolted and the state of things now, when this wicked insurrection has broken out."

Probably few thoughtful people would now refuse their assent to these serious representations, or would deny their importance; but at the time they were uttered, or just before it, Mr. Bright, Mr. Cobden, and others who thought with them, appeared to be in a minority, and were not believed to represent the popular feeling in England. The attitude of the Federal government towards this country was that of suspicion, and soon became exasperating. The supposed hostility of the English people had been met by offensive demonstrations in the Northern States, and though the governments on both sides carefully abstained from endorsing any such breach of international courtesy as would produce a decided quarrel, the correspondence which went on between them showed great irritation under the reserve of diplomatic phraseology. A very large proportion of the people of England held firmly to the conviction that the Northern States had right and justice on their side in refusing those demands of the South which had for their object the perpetuation of negro slavery. It was perhaps a misfortune that the Federal government should have adopted the determination to preserve the constitution, by destroying the source from

which the constant danger of disruption had emanated, only when it was discovered that a war was inevitable in which each side must put out its strength. The assurance that the first effort to suppress rebellion was independent of the question which had all along been the cause of antagonistic legislation between individual states, and of the violent hostility of the two political parties, missed the true issue of the conflict, and gave the subsequent proclamations of freedom to the negroes the appearance of a desire to raise a servile insurrection in the South for the purpose of retaliation, or as a desperate expedient for retrieving the failures which at first seemed to attend almost every attempt of the Federal forces. By that time, however, the hopes which some Northern statesmen had entertained, that the Confederate revolt could be suppressed before it had grown beyond a domestic insurrection, had been frustrated. The struggle had technically assumed proportions even beyond those of a civil war. By blockading Charleston with sunken stone-ships, and afterwards announcing a blockade of Southern ports, the Federals had acknowledged the Confederates as belligerents. They may not have kept this consequence in view under the stress of circumstances which demanded prompt and extreme measures, but they could scarcely expect that the observances of international law would be dispensed with in their case; and though the proclamation of the British government that thenceforth the Southern States of America must be regarded as a belligerent power, and strict neutrality must be exercised, increased the angry feeling to a pitch that led to extravagant menace, deliberate politicians on both sides, and a considerable majority in this country, felt that no other course could reasonably be adopted.

We may look for a moment at some of the conditions which had exercised an influence on public feeling in England, and they will in some degree serve to explain the differences of opinion which prevailed during the first year of the struggle between the disunited states.

The fugitive slave question had been em

phasized by the fact that escaped negroes were assisted by the abolitionists to find a refuge in Canada, where they were safe from demands for their restoration on the authority of "state laws." In 1861 the case of John Anderson became very prominent as an example of the liberty to be attained by seeking an asylum in Canada, and at the same time illustrated with remarkable effect the evil of slavery. Anderson, a negro slave, but not without some admixture of white blood, had been brought up in the state of Missouri, where he eventually married a slave girl, from whom and from his child he was separated by being sold into a distant part of the country as though he had been a mere beast of burden, but with even less care for his wellbeing. Iu the year 1853, however, he escaped from the plantation to which he was sent and reappeared in the neighbourhood where his wife still lived, only to be discovered by Seneca P. Digges, a planter, who had not the slightest claim on the fugitive, but who, in order to uphold the great institution of slavery, at once volunteered a man hunt for the good of the cause, and went on Anderson's track with four slaves to help him. After having hunted their game till he became desperate, they at last came up with him, and in an evil moment Digges closed with the runaway, who, in the defence of life and liberty, stabbed his antag onist and mortally wounded him, afterwards escaping to Canada, where he lived the life of a quiet and industrious man, although his wife and child were not redeemed from the bondage which he had long been anxious to terminate, by saving a sufficient sum to purchase their freedom. Anderson was claimed by the United States government on a charge of murdering Digges, and on his trial in December, 1859, it was urged on behalf of the prisoner that he was entitled to the writ on which he was brought before the court, and, upon the return of the writ, to have the matter charged against him inquired into; that the evidence was not sufficient to put him upon trial for the crime of murder, assuming that he was entitled to the protection of British law; that a charge under the treaty should be first laid in the States, while there