agrarianism and atheism and fanaticism and socialism do their perfect work in a crowded and crowding population, will not the dark enigmas of free-labor civilization press heavily upon it, and the dread images evoked by the prophetic wisdom of Macauley arise indeed—taxation, monopoly, oppression, misery of the masses, revolution, standing armies, despotism, &c.? It may yet deserve the strange epitaph written for this nation by Elwood Fisher:

Have we rightly comprehended the fearful import of those words, the Africanization of the South? According to the present rate of increase, in fifty years the negroes of these States will amount to twenty millions. Suppose them to be restricted to their present arena. Suppose them in addition to be free. Imagine the misery, the crime, the poverty, the barbarism, the desolation of the country! The grass would grow in the streets of our cities, our ships would rot in their harbors, our plantations would become a wilderness of cane-brakes. The re-subjugation of the negro, or the extermination of one race or the other would be inevitable, and in any event our children would be beggared with an inheritance of woe. Let us swear upon the altar of God, that as Christians and citizens we will resist to the death the first step which might lead us towards this awful abyss!

If the Republican party is permitted to get into power, the Africanization of the South may be gradual, but it will be sure. Their leaders already boast to applauding multitudes that the heel of the North is at last on our necks. When the power, the patronage, the prestige of the federal government are wielded against slavery; when Southern men take office under it, and first apologize and then approve; when a free-soil sentiment gradually percolates through the South itself; when the brightness of Southern honor is tarnished, and the integrity of Southern opinion destroyed, what will be, what must be the inevitable result? Nothing hasty or violent will be attempted. The iniquity will be accomplished under the forms of the present Constitution. Remember that the coins of Nero bore the image of the Goddess of Liberty, and that a perverted Constitution is the choicest instrument of tyranny. Lulled by pleasant narcotics, we will pass from dreams of security, into the sleep of death. Or if we rouse ourselves at last, and reach out for our fallen thunderbolts, we will be found, like Sampson, blind and helpless, and they will make sport of our misery. The silken cords with which they bind us now, will change to iron fetters in our moment of revolt.

The precedent alone would be fatal. Shall we submit to an administration which received not a single vote in ten of our States? We could not be represented in its cabinet, nor in any foreign mission, for what Southern gentleman of proper sensibilities would accept office at its hands? The South would be unrepresented at home or abroad. She would have received a blow, politically, socially and morally, which would ensure her destruction. This is precisely what Seward, Beecher and Greeley are aiming at. We are to be coaxed, cheated, legislated out of our rights and liberties. What cannot be achieved by trickery, will at length be attempted by force. The most hateful feature in the despotism which threaten us is its religious element. If we are outraged because the Constitution is violated and broken, what shall we say of those hypocrites or madmen who have perverted the Word of God to the most detestable purposes of man!

The true test of statesmanship, according to Burke, is to preserve and improve, not to abolish and destroy. We apply this to the institution of slavery, and are willing to accord it to the existing Union: Have we exhausted our Constitutional remedies? Is not the Republican party