d brought to him information of the greatest
importance. Yet, despite the frightful appearances against us, our
writer saw, through all, the truth, and declared that, as regarded the
popular British abuse of this country, 'never was an explanation of a
political catastrophe propounded, in more daring defiance of all the
great and cardinal realities of the case with which it professed to
deal.'

Slavery is the cause and core of our national difficulty. Secession and
Southern Rights have flourished in strength in exact ratio to the number
of slaves in the States--nay, in the very counties in which slaves
abounded. Slavery early developed a sectional class of politicians
devoted to one object, who, by the sheer force of intense, unscrupulous
application, from the year 1819 down to 1860, swayed our councils, gave
an infamous character to American diplomacy, and stained our national
character. They are called the Free Trade Party: why was it, then, that
they never employed their power to accomplish that object, 'or how does
it happen that, having submitted to the tariffs of 1832, 1842, and 1846,
it should have resorted to the extreme measure of secession while under
the tariff of 1857--a comparatively Free Trade law'? 'From 1842 down to
1860, the tendency of Federal legislation was distinctly in the
direction of Free Trade.' 'If Free Trade was their main object, why did
the Southern senators withdraw from their posts precisely at the time
when their presence was most required to secure their cherished
principle?' Or why did they not apply to their supple and infamous tool,
Buchanan, to veto the bill? _Because they wished it to pass_--to make
political capital against the North in England; and they accordingly
aided its passage, Mr. Toombs being in the Senate, and actually voting
for it! Or if it was a Free Trade question, why was it that the Western
States did not take part with them?

The North, however, did not take up arms to destroy slavery, but the
Right of Secession, since that was the irritating _point d'honneur_,
and, what was more, the real first cause of injury which at first
presented itself. Mr. Lincoln had cause to know that in the beginning,
even in the South itself, secession was only the work of a turbulent
minority. 'To have yielded would have been to have written himself down
before the world as incompetent--nay, as a traitor to the cause which he
had just sworn to defend.' In short, we were misunderstood-