tions; suppose they
limit themselves to purely maritime repression of the revolt; that,
after striking off the Southern harbors from the list of seaports, and
declaring that custom-house duties cannot be legally paid there, they
maintain this blockade, which Europe ought to applaud; would they have
averted all chances of conflict? No; alas! However temporary such a
situation might be, complaints, recriminations, and, ere long, violent
reprisals, would be seen everywhere arising. Rivalries of principles,
rivalries of interests, bitter memories of past injuries, such are the
rocks on which peaceful policy would be in continual danger of
shipwreck.

We must not cherish illusions; the chances, of civil war have been
increasing for a few weeks past with fearful rapidity. If Mr. Lincoln
has confined himself scrupulously to conservative and defensive
measures, there has been, on the contrary, in the actions of the South,
a violent precipitation which has surpassed all expectancy. It is the
haste of skilful men, who attempt by a bold stroke to carry off the
advantages of a deed accomplished; it is at the same time, and chiefly,
perhaps, the haste of men who have nothing to lose, the ringleaders of
the present hour. At the end of resources, the insurgent South has
already increased its taxes inordinately; it has killed public and
private credit; it has created a disturbed revolutionary condition,
intolerable in the end, which no longer permits deliberation, or even
reflection. Will the South pause on such a road? It is difficult to hope
it. As to the North, its plan of action is very simple, and easily
maintained: suppose even that through impossibility it should give over
forcing the rebels back to their duty, who can ever imagine that it
would suffer itself to be deprived of the mouths of the Mississippi, or
that it would abandon to the rival Confederacy the capital itself of the
Union, inclosed within the slave States? Let us see things as they are:
the maintenance and development of slavery in the South will render the
abolitionist proceedings of its neighbor intolerable in its eyes; if it
has not been able to endure a contradiction accompanied with infinite
circumspection, and tempered by many prudent disclaimers, how will it
support this daily torture, a unanimous and well-founded censure, a
perpetual denunciation of the infamies which accompany and constitute
the "patriarchal institution"? The North, on its side, will be