whites, the poor and ignorant whites, and the
servile class, would seem naturally to point to an aristocratic or
constitutional-monarchical form of government. But, in their transition
state, difficulties are to be met in all directions; and the
well-ordered social distinctions of a constitutional monarchy seem
hardly consistent with the time-honored licentious independence and
rude equality of Southern society. The reign of King Cotton, however,
conducted under the present policy, must inevitably tend to increase and
aggravate all the present social tendencies of the Southern system,--
all the anti-republican affinities already strongly developed. It makes
deeper the chasm dividing the rich and the poor; it increases vastly the
ranks of the uneducated; and, finally, while most unnaturally forcing
the increase of the already threatening African infusion, it also tends
to make the servile condition more unendurable, and its burdens heavier.

The modern Southern politician is the least far-seeing of all our
short-sighted classes of American statesmen. In the existence of a
nation, a generation should be considered but as a year in the life of
man, and a century but as a generation of citizens. Soon or late, in the
lives of this generation or of their descendants, in the Union or out
of the Union, the servile members of this Confederacy must, under the
results of the prolonged dynasty of Cotton, make their election either
to purchase their security, like Cuba, by dependence on the strong arm
of external force, or they must meet national exigencies, pass through
revolutions, and destroy and reconstruct governments, making every
movement on the surface of a seething, heaving volcano. All movements of
the present, looking only to the forms of government of the master, must
be carried on before the face of the slave, and the question of class
will ever be complicated by that of caste. What the result of the
ever-increasing tendencies of the Cotton dynasty will be it is therefore
impossible to more than dream. But is it fair to presume that the
immense servile population should thus see upturnings and revolutions,
dynasties rising and falling before their eyes, and ever remain quiet
and contented? "Nothing," said Jefferson, "is more surely written in the
Book of Fate than that this people must be free." Fit for freedom at
present they are not, and, under the existing policy of the Cotton
dynasty, never can be. "Whether under any