Claims of the Insane to our compassion.

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ing and disturbing. On the question of visiting by the authorities, and the various modifications of existing rules so desirable, there is ample room for enlargement.

Let it not be supposed that we have given undue prominence to this subject in any of its bearings. The treatment of the insane, physically, morally, and socially, is one of the great problems of our day; and while in foreign countries, and partially amongst ourselves, the cretin, the idiot, the deaf, the mute, and the blind are being gradually reclaimed and placed upon something like ordinary human levels, we have an ample field for all our philanthropy and generosity. Yon weak and wandering man now crooning to himself like a child, anon raving in wild storms of passion, or skipping and gambolling like Puck himself, has all the claims of human relationship upon us. He may have forfeited some of his highest gifts, and wrenched himself away from the love and compassion of his friends, but in the estimation of society he ought never to lose his human birthright, or lack the tendernesses of some good Samaritan. When Sophocles was charged with insanity by his sons, he read to the judges his Edipus Coloneus; and many a poor lunatic nowadays might point to his simple love for nature, and all her sweet sights and sounds, and even his erratic friendships, to prove that he is not wholly destitute of a man's nature and heart. To civilization with its excessive brain-work and over-culture, its continued strain upon the nervous centres, its intermarriages, its poverty, and its inefficient and adulterated food, most of our insanity is owing; and surely it is our duty to be prompt and open-handed in all remedial measures, penetrated by impulses of pure beneficence and Christian love. The old blind bard of Greece, weary and wayworn, but glad at heart, and busy with pictures of fancied repose, enters the gates of Cuma, where cradled in the lap of a tender mother he drew in his young life. At first honoured, he is at length refused the city's hospitality, and full of tears and bitter thoughts he turns his back upon the ungrateful place. The poor crazed man is the product of our civilization and its concomitant evils, and he lifts up to us his dim eyes and beseeching hands like this aged beggar. And may all the curses he vented against the Cumæans fall upon us if we shut our hands against help, and close our ears to the divine voices of muses more beautiful and winning than ever couched amid the clouds of Parnassus, or tripped amid the dewy glens of Citharon !

ART.

ART. V.-1. Life and Liberty in America. By Charles Mackay, LL.D. 1859.

2. Glimpses of Affairs in America. By W. Chambers. 1857. 3. Letters from the Slave States. By James Stirling. 1857. 4. File of the New York Tribune.' 1858-60.

THE

HE atmosphere of the domestic politics of the United States has never been of the mildest nature. The union fought itself into being, and its subsequent existence has been one of continual strife. But latterly the aspect of affairs has yearly been assuming a more and more gloomy appearance, until at the present time a crisis of great magnitude seems to be impending over the country, threatening the dismemberment of the confederation, and the introduction of the numerous calamitous events which would 'tread on the heel' of such an unfortunate occurrence. But virtually, or at all events, morally speaking, the union of the States ceased to exist when the independence of the colonies was recognized by the mother country. During the revolutionary war the entire population, white and black, were bound together in the prosecution of a common cause, for the attainment of a common object-the individual as well as national liberty of the whole people, without distinction of colour or circumstance; but no sooner had the war terminated, than discord appeared in the camp of the republic: for whilst some of the States, in the most honourable manner, proceeded either to liberate their slaves, or provide for their gradual emancipation, as a meet reward for their patriotism, others of them, to their eternal disgrace, sought rather to consolidate and intensify the sufferings of the unfortunate negroes, who, though they had fought and bled for the liberation of the commonwealth, were deprived of all share in the glorious results of the successful issue. The consequence of this was an actual division of the States into two sections-the one north, and free, the other south, and slave-between whom there has since been an unintermitting contest for supremacy. The late disgraceful proceedings at Washington in the matter of the election of Speaker were a fair sample of the kind of warfare which has been going on for the last eighty years or more. The question of slavery has been the foundation of all the troubles of the Union: a retrospective glance at the history of that subject will not, therefore, be uninteresting.

The declaration of independence was made on the 4th July, 1776, but there was no regular federal constitution framed until 1787, and that did not come into execution until 1789. During the interval the country was governed by a 'Congress of Confederation,' which sat sometimes at New York and sometimes at Philadelphia.

Down

Discussion on Population.

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Down to 1789, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had made provision for the emancipation of their slaves.

In 1783 the old Congress met for the purpose of considering the subject of ways and means,' and to apportion between the several States the liabilities incurred during the war just then brought to a close. The basis adopted was that of population. The first question that presented itself was the manner in which the slaves should be counted, or whether they should be counted at all. The slave States maintained that the blacks ought not to be counted, on the ground that they were property' and not persons; but the free States held the reverse: the slaves, they said, were persons and not 'property,' and ought, therefore, to be counted. After considerable discussion, however, a compromise was adopted, the matter being settled by reckoning three-fifths only of the slaves as a basis of population.

In 1784, Virginia and some other States ceded to government a large tract of territory to the west of the Ohio, to be appropriated for the benefit of the national treasury. No sooner had the Congress met to consider the organization and settlement of these territories, than the question arose as to whether they should be occupied by slave or free labour. Here, again, the north and south were at issue, and the struggle continued for three years without any conclusive result. On the 1st March 1784, a committee was appointed to report on the matter. Mr. Jefferson was the leading member, and the originator of the main article of the report, which was to the effect that slavery should be excluded from all the territories of the Union, which might be admitted into the confederation of States in future. On the 19th April this proposition was rejected by Congress. The friends of liberty made one more effort in March 1785, but were again defeated. During the debates some of the representatives of the slaveholding States were most violent in their denunciations; and not a few of them threatened withdrawal from the Union if their views were not adopted. Indeed, things were brought to such a pitch, that it was found impossible to carry on the business of the country.

As a last resort a convention was called in order to form a firmer government, and reconsider the subject of the territories. The first thing to do was to organize a system of representation. It was settled that population should be the basis. Then reappeared the vexed question as to how the slaves were to be counted. The matter had been settled in respect of taxation by counting five negroes as three persons. The South was willing to adopt the same plan as a basis of representation; but the North objected, on the same grounds that the South had previously demurred when the subject of taxation was under consideration. Vol. 3.-No. 9.

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Finally,

Finally, another special committee was formed. The result was the birth of a new compromise, which obtained the concurrence of both the contending parties. The South, on its part, conceded that the territories north and west of the Ohio should be free, provided that every facility should be given to slaveholders in pursuit of 'fugitives from labour' from out the slave States, and who might have secreted themselves in the free States; and the North, on its part, accepted the three-fifths calculation of the slaves as a basis of representation, and also subscribed to the article which guaranteed to the Slave-traders the integrity of their inhuman traffic until the 1st January 1808. By this arrangement the pro-slavery party was for the time appeased, and the abolitionists satisfied. The latter considered that they had obtained more advantageous terms than their opponents, consoling themselves with the idea that slavery would cease to exist upon the prohibition of the external trade. Their hopes were strengthened by the progress already made in the direction of emancipation by many of the States, and by the partial measures introduced by some of the remaining States, which seemed to indicate that they would ere long follow the example of their more liberal confederates; for several of the southern States had already passed laws for the prohibition or restriction of negro imports. Even North Carolina, which had been so strenuous in its opposition to Jefferson's territorial motion, had prohibited the trade for twelve months, an experiment which she afterwards repeated annually until 1804; but in that year the demand for labour began to increase, and from thence to January 1808 there had been 33,775 slaves imported into the port of Charleston. The act of Congress, however, as previously agreed upon, put an end to the infamous traffic, and the planters had thenceforward to rely upon their own resources.

To keep up the narrative of the conflict between the two parties, we must now go back to the year 1803, the period of the celebrated Louisiana debates. In that year the Congress had to take into consideration the appropriation and government of a large extent of territory obtained by purchase from the Emperor Napoleon. The best friends of the Union objected to the purchase of the territory at all; but their opposition was useless, for in addition to a united South, which had an eye to the extension of its favourite institution,' certain ambitious representatives of the North voted for incorporation: the district to be parcelled out into states, and admitted into the confederation as soon as they attained the population, &c., required by law; but there was no provision made as to whether the constituticus of such states were to be slave or free! Such was the state of utter indifference into which the anti-slavery party had fallen, and the false security into which the measures of 1787 had thrown them. The slave-states were

now

Passage of the Louisiana Bill.

67

now all-powerful, for notwithstanding their inferiority in population, they were, by the three-fifths calculation of their slaves, entitled to a representation equal, if not superior, to that of the free States. Besides which the politicians of the country had become completely demoralized; self-interest, in its lowest forms, had taken the place of the patriotism which had animated the great lights of the revolution. Josiah Quincy, in speaking of the Louisiana Bill, thus describes the means employed in securing its passage through Congress:

The passage of the Louisiana Admission Bill was effected by acts which slaveholders well knew how to select and apply. Sops were given to the congressional watch-dogs of the free States. To some, promises were made by way of opiates; and those whom they could neither pay nor drug were publicly treated with insolence and scorn. Threats, duels, and violence were at that day, as now, modes approved by them to deter men from awakening the free States to a sense of danger. From the moment the act was passed, they saw that the free States were shorn of their strength; that they had obtained space to multiply their slaves at their will; and Mr. Jefferson had confidently told them that, from that moment, the constitution of the United States was blank paper;' but more correctly there was no longer any constitution. The slaveholders from that day saw they had the free States in their power; and that they were masters, and the free States slaves; and have acted accordingly. From the passage of the Louisiana Bill until this day, their policy has been directed to a single object, with almost uninterrupted success. That object was to exclude the free States from any share of power, except in subserviency to their views; and they have undeniably, during the subsequent period of our history (the administration of John Quincy Adams only excepted), placed in the chair of state, either slaveholders or men from the ree States who, for the sake of power, consented to be their tools-" northern men with southern principles "-in other words, men who, for the sake of power or pay, were willing to do what they would set them upon.'*

We have already remarked that it was the general opinion that the existence of slavery depended upon the importation of negroes from Africa, and that so soon as such importation ceased the institution would gradually die out; for it was supposed that such a scarcity of the article' would follow upon prohibition as would so enhance its price as to compel planters to resort to free labour as the cheaper method of cultivating their crops; subsequent events have proved (what might have been demonstrated à priori) the fallacy of the supposition. In 1790 the number of slaves in the States was 697,897; in 1820, 1,538,064; and at the present time, 4,165,000.

Down to the period of the convention of 1789 the planters of the southern States had been engaged principally in the cultivation of rice and indigo, then the best-paying growths; but the profits of the trade were lessening yearly in consequence of the competition of India, then beginning to be felt. The cotton plant, now the great staple of southern agriculture, was then only cultivated to a limited extent; the process of cleaning the fibre being so slow and

* Address illustrative of the Nature and Power of the Slave States, and the Duties of the Free States. Delivered at Lurney, Massachusetts, June 5th, 1856.

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expensive