question, has
long been notorious; but this, at least, was shrouded with a thin vail
of decorum which the peculators in military and civil high places
disdained to encumber themselves with in these latter days.

Instances of all this might be multiplied to weariness, but you have
only to look at a week's files of any northern journal to be convinced
of the existing state of things, which even the Black Republicans not
unfrequently bewail.

There is another sort of extra-horse that the Government, or its organs,
are fond of riding for a short "spell," when the others have been hacked
rather too hardly. They have christened it--"Perfidious Albion." To
speak the truth, however, the Anglophobia is not confined to the
Abolitionists or Republicans when anything occurs to make any particular
journal cross or querulous, you are almost sure to meet, that same week,
a sanguinary leader, with the threadbare motto--"_delenda est
Britannia_." Lately, it has been suggested that the most certain fact to
secure the adhesion of the South, would be an invitation to join in an
internecine war with England and France, with Canada and Mexico for
prizes.

Truly Secessia has little cause to love us; for our practical sympathy
with her in her dire strait has been confined to the furnishing of
war-munitions at a moderate profit of three hundred per cent.; yet, I
think, even in such a cause, Georgia, Carolina, and Virginia would stand
aloof, rather than dress up in line with the Yankee battalions. The
mobocracy are "all for a muss," of course, as they always are till they
see the glitter of bayonets; but I cannot believe that the bellicose
ideas they are so fond of mooting have ever been seriously entertained
by the Government. The Federal navy is too utterly inefficient now, save
for attack and defense along its own shores, to give cause for
apprehension even to a second-class Power: it cannot even protect
Northern commerce. For a year or more, the Florida and Alabama have
laughed at the beards of all the cruisers, and carry on depredation
still with a high hand. The only grave aggression must be made on the
frontier of Canada; and there the invaders would be met by a militia
quite as well drilled as themselves, who have held their own, once
before, gallantly; to say nothing of the reinforcement of our own
regular army; if the crack regiments of New York or Massachusetts should
chance, in such a case, to find the Guards or Highlanders in th