to assert that the safety and tranquillity of
Southern society depend on the fact that the
Northern people are close at hand to aid in
case of need,--that the power of the General
Government is ever ready for the same purpose.
Four millions of barbarians, growing
with tropical vigor, and soon to be eight millions,
with tropical passions boiling in their
blood, endowed with native courage, with
sinews strong by toil, and stimulated by the
hope of liberty and unbounded license, are
not to be trifled with. Take away from them
the idea of an irresistible power in the North,
ready at any moment to be invoked by their
masters, or let them expect in the North, not
enemies, but friends and supporters, which
even now they are told every day by these
masters they may expect,--and how soon
might a flame be lighted which no power in
the South could extinguish!"

Mr. Fisher treats of the "Law of the Territories" in two essays,--the
first considering more particularly "The Territories and the
Constitution," the second, "Popular Sovereignty in the Territories." The
first commences with a quotation so happy that it has all the effect of
original wit:--

"The wily and witty Talleyrand was once
asked the meaning of the word 'non-intervention,'
so often used in European diplomacy.
'It is a word,' he replied, 'metaphysical and
political, not accurately defined, but which
means--much the same thing as intervention!'
The same word has been frequently
employed, of late years, in our politics, with
the same difference between its professed
and its practical signification. It was introduced
for the first time in reference to the
government of the Territories, when it became
an object for the South to gain Kansas as a
Slave State. Two obstacles were to be overcome.
One was the Missouri Compromise,
which was a solemn compact between North
and South to settle a disturbing and dangerous
question; the other was a possible majority
in Congress, that, it was feared, might prohibit
slavery in the new Territory. Southern
politicians had at the time control of the government;
and they got rid of both difficulties
by repealing the Missouri Compromise in the
Kansas and Nebraska Bill. By necessary implication,
arising from the relation of the Territories
to the rest of the nation, by the language
of the Constitution, and by the uniform
constructio