ncingly tries both the vigor of a nation and
the wisdom of its polity. It is with this class that we shall have to
deal in arranging the conditions of settlement; and we must do it with
a broad view of the interests of the whole country and of the great
mass of the Southern people, whose ignorance and the prejudices
consequent from it made it so easy to use them as the instruments of
their own ruin. No immediate advantage must blind us to the real
objects of the war,--the securing our external power and our internal
tranquillity, and the making them inherent and indestructible by
founding them upon the common welfare.

The first condition of permanent peace is to render those who were the
great slaveholders when the war began, and who will be the great
landholders after it is over, powerless for mischief. What punishment
should be inflicted on the chief criminals is a matter of little
moment. The South has received a lesson of suffering which satisfies
all the legitimate ends of punishment, and as for vengeance, it is
contrary to our national temper and the spirit of our government. Our
great object should be, not to weaken, but to strengthen the South,--to
make it richer, and not poorer. We must not repeat the stupid and fatal
blunder of slaveholding publicists, that the wealth and power of one
portion of the country are a drain upon the resources of the rest,
instead of being their natural feeders and invigorators. Any general
confiscation of Rebel property, therefore, seems to us unthrifty
housekeeping, for it is really a levying on our own estate, and a
lessening of our own resources. The people of the Southern States will
be called upon to bear their part of the grievous burden of taxation
which the war will leave upon our shoulders, and that is the fairest as
well as the most prudent way of making them contribute to our national
solvency. All irregular modes of levying contributions, however
just,--and exactly just they can seldom be,--leave discontent behind
them, while a uniform system, where every man knows what he is to pay
and why he is to pay it, tends to restore stability by the very
evenness of its operation, by its making national interests familiar to
all, and by removing any sense of injustice. Any sweeping confiscation,
such as has sometimes been proposed in Congress with more heat than
judgment, would render the South less available for revenue, would
retard the return of industry to its legitimate ch