with them.'

'But we may _annihilate_ them,' was the crushing reply.

And CONSERVE took his hat and departed.

It is, when we come to facts, really remarkable that it has not occurred
to the world that there _can_ be but one solution to a dispute which has
gone so far. _There is no stopping this war._ Secession is an
impossibility. If we _willed_ it, we could not prevent 'an institutional
race' from absorbing one which has no accretive principle of growth. It
is thought, as we write, that during the week preceding July 4th,
_seventy thousand_ of the Secession army perished! They are exhausting,
annihilating themselves; and by whom will the vacancy be filled? Not by
the children of States which, under the old system, fell behindhand in
population. By whom, then? By Northern men and European emigrants, of
course.

But European intervention? If Louis Napoleon wants to keep his crown--if
England wishes Europe to remain quiet--if they both dread our good
friend Russia, who in event of a war would 'annex,' for aught we can
see, all Austria and an illimitable share of the East--if they wish to
avoid such an upstirring, riot, and infernal carnival of revolution as
the world never saw--they will let us alone.

The London _Herald_ declares that 'America is a nuisance among nations!'
When they undertake to meddle with us, they will find us one. We would
not leave them a ship on the sea or a seaboard town un-ruined. The whole
world would wail one wild ruin, and there should be the smoke as of
nations, when despotism should dare to lay its hand on the sacred cause
of freedom. For we of the North are living and dying in that cause which
never yet went backward, and we shall prevail, though the powers of all
Europe and all the powers of darkness should ally against us. Let them
come. They do but bring grapes to the wine-press of the Lord; and it
will be a bloody vintage which will be pressed forth in that day, as the
great cause goes marching on.

* * * * *

Let no one imagine that our military draft has been one whit too great.
Our great folly hitherto has been to underrate the power of the enemy.
In the South every male who can bear arms is now either bearing them or
otherwise directly aiding the rebellion. When the sheriffs of every
county in the seceding States made their returns to their Secretary of
War, they reported one million four hundred thousand men capable of
bearing arms. And they h