to his honor and his allegiance,--had Ireland been supplied
and England stripped of arms and munitions of war by the connivance
of the Government,--the riot of 1848 might have become a rebellion as
formidable as our own in everything but territorial proportions. Equally
untrue is the theory that our Tariff is the moving cause of Southern
discontent. Louisiana certainly would hardly urge this as the reason of
her secession; and if the Rebel States could succeed in establishing
their independence, they would find more difficulty in raising a
national revenue by direct taxes than the North, and would be driven
probably to a tariff more stringent than that of the present United
States. If we are to generalize at all, it must be on broader and
safer grounds. Prejudices and class-interests may occasion temporary
disturbances in the current of human affairs, but they do not
permanently change the course of the channel. That is governed by
natural and lasting causes, and commerce, in spite of Southern
Commercial Conventions, will no more flow up-hill than water. It is
possible, we will not say probable, that our present difficulties may
result to the advantage both of England and America: to England, by
giving her a real hold upon India as the source of her cotton-supply,
and to America by making the North the best customer for the staple of
the South.

We believe the immediate cause of the Southern Rebellion to be something
far deeper than any social prejudice or political theory on the part of
slaveholders, or any general apprehension of danger to their peculiar
property. That cause is a moral one, and is to be found in the
recklessness, the conceit, the sophistry, the selfishness, which are
necessarily engendered by Slavery itself. A generation of men educated
to justify a crime against the Law of Nature because it is profitable,
will hardly be restrained long by any merely political obligation, when
they have been persuaded to see their advantage in the breach of it. Why
not, then, at once lay the axe to the root of the mischief? Why did not
England attack Irish Catholicism in 1848? Why does not Louis Napoleon
settle the Papal Question with a stroke of his pen? Because the action
of a constitutional government is limited by constitutional obligations.
Because every government, even if despotic, must be guided by policy
rather than abstract right or reason. Because, in our own case, so much
pains have been taken to persuade