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then, the exclusion of slavery an exclusion of the slaveholder, the exclusion of the slaveholder would not by consequence be an exclusion of the South.

3. The reasoning of Dr. Thornwell would irresistibly restore slavery to the free states. He asserts without restriction "that the Constitution recognizes slaves as property." He demands "upon what principle shall Congress undertake to abolish this right upon a territory of which it is the local legislator? It will not permit the slave to cancel it because the service is due. Upon what ground can itself interpose between a man and his dues ?" Now, certainly, if the right of property intrinsically in the slave be thus established by the Constitution, no state can abrogate that property without violating the Constitution of the United States. If Congress, in its character of legislature of a territory, cannot abrogate that right of property, much less can the legislature of any state. A large body of slaveholders, therefore, with a caravan of their living chattels, may march into New York state, re-establish slavery, and no state law can touch their ownership. And we solemnly repeat, that had another national victory been won by the great proslavery party of this country, this argument would never have been left a mere abstraction. The same Supreme Court that, with such indecent haste, proclaimed its extra-judicial dicta in the Dred Scott case, would soon announce from the national capital that all laws heretofore passed abolishing slavery are violations of the national Constitution.

4. The injustice of erecting new slave states without the full consent of the free states, is demonstrated from the fact to which we have already referred, that the representation of slavery constitutes the slaveholder a privileged caste. The great injustice of this representation, since it is in the Constitution, may be suffered while confined to the present slave states. But when new states are created, the oligarchic interest is strengthened oppressively to the free states and dangerous to the republic. It is absurd to expect of the free states any increase of slave states on a basis by which themselves are reduced to vassalage.

5. No principle of law is better established than that property destructive to the public good is bound to diminish and disappear. Its circulation, diffusion, extension, are rightfully prohibited. If it blast the soil, destroy the health, or demoralize the character of the community, the law justly abates the nuisance. And now, if there be any truth in history, any reliance upon statistics, any respect due to the voice of the civilized world, any validity in the axioms

of the moral sense, all these evils are chargeable upon the institution of slavery. Acting, then, from his own views of duty, the intelligent northern freeman is compelled by the obligations of conscience so to exercise his franchises as a citizen, as to rescue the virgin soil of the free West from an institution that shall blast it with a curse for untold ages.

6. The claim of Dr. Thornwell that slaves are to be held "just like any other property," and so transferable to free soil, in order to be valid, must be consistent. The claim must be grounded upon the universality of the maxim we quote. It is a hard maxim, degrading to humanity, and contrary to the humane spirit of modern law, that person-property has no more tendency to ascend to personality than brute-property or thing-property. But the slaveholder himself, when it comes to the matter of government representation, to constitutional interpretation, and to remanding fugitives, is obliged to claim that the slave shall not be "like any other property." Thing-property is not represented; it is not a "person" in the text of the Constitution; it is never to be restored to the owner by national authority when it escapes. In all these respects slaves are, by the slaveholder's own claim, not "like any other property." By this triple contradiction the slaveholder destroys the validity of his own maxim. He claims that the slave shall rise to person and sink to thing, arbitrarily and contradictorily, as his own interests, and not the interests of humanity, shall demand.

7. The extension of slavery is the perpetuation of slavery. This with Dr. Thornwell is an argument in favor of such extension; with us, against it. We know that but a brief period has elapsed, since the northern pro-slavery sophists have told us that to extend slavery was only to diffuse and rather weaken it than strengthen and perpetuate it. But Dr. Thornwell and the slaveholders know better. They know that the system, to live, must devour the soil it occupies, and sweep in devastation over new territory. Then the old section becomes slave-breeding, and the new slave-consuming. But circumscribe its area and the system gives way to free industry.

Identifying slavery as well as the slaveholder with the South, Dr. Thornwell characterizes the cessation of slavery as the destruction of the South. This self-deception by use of words and phrases is at the present time maddening the southern mind. But surely slavery is not the South. The slaveholders are but a minority of the South; slavery but an institution in the South. The South

could not only survive slavery, but rise from its cessation to a diversified industry, a vaster wealth, a more liberal education, a higher civilization, a prouder position in the respect of the civilized world. The enemy of slavery, we are the friend of the South. It is not from the destruction or the injury, but from the higher prosperity of the South that there would arise, as we believe, a higher prosperity for the North and a higher happiness to the whole.

Dr. Thornwell expresses the hope that, as the Union can never be restored, still peace may be preserved, and that two great republics may develop their different civilizations in common alliance against any attacks from foreign nations. We expressed in a former number of our Quarterly the wish that this peace might be preserved. To us war and slavery are twin evils. May God deliver both sections of our land from both. Nevertheless, the South in separation can never expect that slave-catching will remain the ex-officio duty of northern citizenship. No aid can be expected from northern arms to maintain oppression. No slavery can be permitted to set its foot in the western domain; no fillibuster or foreign conquest can be allowed to enlarge the slave empire. The scorpion must still be girt with fire, and his first and last good act must be suicide. The dismal prospect before the seceding states now appears to be, that not only will they fail in their visions of ruining northern commerce, but that they will forfeit the control of the market of the world for their sole staple, and, by losing the adhesion of the Border States, collapse in their schemes of southern empire. What can be expected from the seven petty cotton oligarchies on the Gulf but the adding a new force to the meaning of the word failure?

But it is our purpose merely to defend the rightfulness of our past and present position, not to lay out a programme for the future. With the extreme states lies the responsibility for all the evils of disunion, and most of the misdoings that have prepared its way. Our view of the future is cheerful and trusting, trusting in that Providence that smiles upon its own cause. Even disunion has its compensations. It will make us what we have never yet been, fully and consistently a FREE nation. Countless will be the blessings of a full emancipation from the dread evils not only of slavery domination but of union with slaveholders. That disunion will hasten the downfall of slavery, and perhaps a reconstruction on a free basis. We are thankful that our national government and capital are rescued from the hands of traitors. Our hope and

trust is that it is a Providential hand that has placed at our helm the firmness, integrity, and natural statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. Surrounded with a cabinet of rare ability, and standing as the impersonation of our national welfare, we rejoice that he exhibits those traits that concentrate popular sympathy, and believe that a rally to his firm support will in due time be held a test of patriotism.

ART. X.-FOREIGN RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE.

GREAT BRITAIN.

THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES.-The agitation which has sprung up in the Church of England in consequence of the publication of the Rationalistic Essays and Reviews, is still on the increase. The work itself was issued in Febuary, 1861, by the greatest publishing house of England, in a fifth edition, and one of the seven authors (the "Septem contra Christum") has since been elected to the influential position of rector of one of the Oxford colleges. This seems to indicate that the party has gained some strength among the clergy and literary classes; but already the evangelical element in the Church has become aroused. Petitions are numerously signed, praying the bishops to arrest the spreading of the heretical movement; even the powerless Convocation is appealed to for effective measures. In some places the Evangelical party and the High Churchmen have united to combat the intrusion of Rationalism the more successfully, and some of the bishops, at least, have declared their intention not to ordain any candidate who is infected with the neological views. This rise of Rationalism may have contributed somewhat to an abatement of the controversy between the Evangelical party and the High Churchmen. In the diocese of London, it is true, the irritation of the Tractarian clergy and their friends against the bishop for his vigorous opposition to their Romanizing innovations has not abated, and the bishop has even been threatened with legal proceedings. But in other places a reconciliation seems to be aimed at, and the High Church party have had

the satisfaction to see two of their friends, (Revs. Messrs. Cheyne and Neal,) who by their advanced Tractarian principles had drawn upon themselves the disfavor and the censure of their diocesans, restored to their ecclesiastical functions. The ranks of the High Churchmen themselves, however, are divided by a split which is daily widening. The organ of the extreme Romanizing portion, the Union, has become so openly and defiantly Popish, that the better elements recoil from what it advocates as the ultimate end of High Churchism.

While the Church of England is rent within by this Rationalistic controversy, a struggle no less fierce awaits her on the political arena. The Dissenters are not discouraged by the defeats which the motions for an abolition of the Church rate has hitherto met with in one or both houses of the English Parliament, but have been making more energetical efforts than ever before for obtaining from Parliament at least a first installment of their abolition. Many liberal Churchmen are fighting in this question by the side of the Dissenters against the great prerogative of the state Church; although, to the great regret and astonishment of the friends of ecclesiastical independence, the Record, the leading organ of the Evangelical party in the Established Church, uses its great influence for the preservation of the rate. The support of Mr. Disraeli, who has tacked the unconditional advocacy of the existing Church rates to the platform of the Tory party, promises to be of less, if of any, service to the cause, as it will tend to enlist the sympathies of the Liberal party, to an even larger extent than before, in favor of abolition. It is even believed

that Mr. Disraeli's plan will give a new impetus to the endeavors of those who demand the abolition not only of Church rates, but of all official connection between the established Church and the State. Thus, for example, the Spectator remarks: "Let Mr. Disraeli induce the clergy to back his scheme, and he and they will probably see a liberal reaction, which will not stop short at Church rates if once aroused by the spectacle of a body of ministers of Christ working day and night to secure the continued existence of a compulsory Church rate.” The sympathy of public opinion with the abolitionists has even induced a zealous High Churchman, Mr. Hubbard, to prepare for the session of Parliament, which commenced on February 4, a compromise measure. He warns the clergy not to believe that which they are now so forward to declare, that there is any such change of public feeling as will enable the Church to resist all attacks upon these rates. And the Guardian, a High Church organ, thinks that if no such compromise is now adopted, the opportunity of saving part of the rate for the Church may pass away forever.

Scotland is kept in a lively agitation by the progress of the Cardross case, the nature and history of which have been fully recorded in former numbers of our Review. The dissenting denominations of Scotland support, as it appears, with entire unanimity, the right of the Free Church of Scotland to execute against its ministers the ecclesiastical decrees of the General Assembly. The course of the government, on the other hand, has the approval of the Congregationalists of England, and as the London Patriot says, of quite a number of the provincial press of Scotland.

A third series of commemoration services in honor of the Scotch Reformation took place on December 20, the three hundredth anniversary of the meeting of the first General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. This meeting may be said to have completed the "First Reformation" of Scotland, and it was natural that the three hundreth anniversary of the day should be selected as the most fitting occasion for a grand, united demonstration. Throughout the length and breadth of the land the day was observed 28 a half holiday. The magistrates of Edinburgh, Ayr, Greenock, Perth, and other considerable towns, recommended the citizens to close their places of busi

ness, so as to enable themselves and their employes to attend divine service in their respective places of worship during the day, and to join in the union meetings in the evening. In Glasgow, and some other towns, where the magistrates declined to make a similar recommendation, the chief object of the holiday was secured by agreement of the leading citizens to close their places of business at an early hour. In the union meetings in the evening, representatives of the following denominations took part: Established Church, Free Church, United Presbyterian Church, English Episcopal Church, Congregationalists, Wesleyans, Baptists, Reformed Presbyterian Church, Original Secession Church, and the Evangelical Union.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.-The statistics of the Roman Church in England and Scotland, published in the Almanac for 1861, show an extraordinary increase in the number of priests, churches, and convents. A comparison, however, with other statistical documents, such as the official registers of marriages, leaves no doubt that the membership has failed to keep pace with this increase, if it has not actually decreased. In Ireland the number of Roman Catholics is believed by the best authorities to be steadily on the decrease, and amounts at present, according to a calculation of the Irish Times, to 3,450,000 souls in a total population of 5,950,000. On the other hand, it is believed that Dr. Cullen, the ultramontane Archbishop of Dublin, has succeeded in bringing the priesthood of Ireland generally into a subserviency to the Pope and the hierarchy, such as would have been ridiculed as impossible in the early part of this century. The success of the Papal tribute, and the thousands who were secretly drafted off for service in the Papal brigade, are regarded as significant signs of a revived vitality in Irish Romanism, and so are the vast numbers of chapels, convents, nunneries, orders of lay brethren, and the remarkable and universal hostility to missions.

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