was an invariable measure of wealth. In this way they did, by indirection, the very thing which, by a great vote, they had already determined not to do.

The result of the arrangement has been to swell the representative power of the commercial classes of the North, and to increase the preponderance over the South, by the wealth derived from the export and import trade of the South. And the same may be said with respect to the non-commercial States of the West. It has been estimated that not less than three millions of people at the North are in this way sustained. This has been the result of the theoretical experiments on the representative basis.

It is not going too far to say, that never was there a more splendid failure in government, never a more wretched conclusion of a grand and ostentatious experiment. Judging the Constitution by its blasting effects, it was the great delusion of the century that gave it birth-it has well nigh ruined the oldest and richest part of the Confederacy-it has pampered with ill-gotten riches the frozen hills and bleak valleys of New England-it has corrupted by the extravagant and lawless expenditures to which it has given birth, the morality of a portion, and will, unless amended or destroyed, gradually undermine that of the whole of the people-it has embittered into deadly hate the animosities between the North and South, a feeling which found its natural expression in the insurrectionary movement of John Brown-it has done all this, because of the vice which its makers introduced in the representation, which, like an error in the first concoction, must be followed by disease, convulsions and finally death itself.

Before I close this part of the subject, I wish to bring prominently before the reader a prophecy of Patrick Henry. He said that the Federal Government, under the inspirations of the North, would tend to assimilate the social institutions of the South to the Northern model, and that it would abolish African slavery in Virginia. George Mason thought that abolition would be brought about through the instrumentality of

the taxing power, but Henry said, that, whilst he could not designate the means that would be employed, he was very sure the government would find means to attain that result. We are at no loss at this day to know by what instrumentalities that anticipated result is to be achieved. The first act was to interdict the slave trade, the next by annexation and purchase to extend the Southern frontier over regions where slave labor would be greatly more valuable than in the neglected and impoverished tobacco fields of Virginia. The mercantile principle of supply and demand would very soon draw off the slaves of Maryland and Virginia, at the same time. the tide of European emigration would be pressing upon those States from the Northward.

This policy was avowed by a Senator from Pennsylvania, as the one which persuaded him to vote for the annexation of the great cotton and sugar regions of Texas. Here, then, was an avowed conspiracy of the central agent against the domestic institutions of those States, and was a complete realization of the marvellous foresight of Patrick Henry.

PART III.

How it may be Restored.

Union in a body politic is a very equivocal term; true union is such a harmony as makes all the particular parts, as opposite as they may seem to us, concur in the general welfare of society, in the same manner as discords in music contribute to the general melody of sound. Union may prevail in a State full of seeming commotion; or, in other words, there may be an harmony whence results prosperity, which alone is true peace, and may be considered in the same view as different parts of this universe, which are eternally connected by the action of some, and the re-action of others.-GRANDEUR AND DECLENSION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

To propose alterations, belongs only to those who are so happy as to be born with a genius capable of penetrating into the entire Constitution of a State.-SPIRIT OF LAWS.

With this admonition before my eyes, I am not disposed rashly to plunge into the work of reform; since it is as difficult to mend as to make a Constitution. To restore a principle which has been lost from the political frame, would not be a task of such magnitude, and would imply no other reform than in the mere means of attaining an immediate object, and that, experience of defects will enable us to do. So to alter the Constitution, as to give to each of the sections a fixed and absolute negative on the action of the government in all its departments, would be only to do that which the framers of the Constitution thought they had done by their unique construction of the popular basis. Why they did not proceed directly to the attainment of that end, and positively establish an Equilibrium, may excite surprise; but the framers of the Constitution, as we are told by Madison in the Federalist, had adopted, as a fixed and pre-determined point, that federal representation was to be the offspring and result of population.

We are at no loss, after an examination of the Debates in 1787, to ascertain their motive for this; it was to accommodate the populous States with a proportionate power. It was that departure from the principles of the Articles of Confederation, that so infinitely complicated the work. Had they adopted the idea of a fixed negative between the North and South, they must have abandoned the idea of a proportion between power and population, and that neither the large States of the North, nor the large States of the South, were willing to do. It was impossible, then, with that foregone conclusion, for the Federal Convention to have made a good Constitution for the North and South. But it is manifest, at this day, as it was then manifest to Mr. Madison, that the dividing line of interest was not on the question of magnitude between the States, but upon the question of slavery. It may well excite the surprise of his posterity, being so fully possessed of that truth as he appears to have been, that that great man had not acted on his conviction, and have insisted upon an equal representation of all the States, together with a sectional Equilibrium.

To restore, then, the Lost Principle to the government, it is only necessary for us to profit by the errors of the past, and, avoiding those breakers upon which our ship of State has been wrecked, to rest upon an immutable basis, a balance of power between the North and South.

But a grave question interposes: Would that which was expedient in 1787, be expedient in 1860? The Equilibrium or negative power is, in its nature, a conservative principle; its object and tendency being to preserve the relative condition of parties to the compact of government. Would the South be content with this? In 1787, each section stood upon its natural resources, but that is not the case now. Power, under the present Constitution, has been employed to dignify and enrich the free-soil section, but to degrade and despoil the slave section. It has given to the inhabitants of the sterile and inhospitable North all the advantages of right be

longing to the fruitful and pleasant South, and to the South, the disabilities and the embarrassments naturally belonging to the North. To embark anew on an experiment of government with the Northern States, under these altered and disadvantageous circumstances, would be, in the South, the extremest folly.

The experience of the United States, under the present Constitution, and the experience under the former Constitution, places the people of this country in possession of ample stores of political knowledge. It will be necessary in reforming the federal compact to go beyond the mere restoration of the Equilibrium, and place in the power of the States, larger powers of self-development than, under the new Constitution, they have. But, in order to make that a valuable acquisition, the wealth of the federal government must be diminished so as not to operate as an attraction to draw intellectual power from the service of the several States; and this will operate as a purification of, and will impart a greater stability to the general government.

A great and irresponsible money power leads necessarily to despotism, but to despotism by the vile paths of corruption; that it does lead to despotism we have the authority of Madison, who with open eyes, as his history proves, conferred upon Congress the power of a revenue, for the collection and expenditure of which they are not and never have been responsible to those from whom the money is extracted.

"At one period of the Congressional history they had power to trample on the States. When they had that fund of paper money in their hands, and could carry on all their measures. without any dependence on the States, was there any disposition to debase the State governments?"

The necessary reforms would lead to a simple reiteration of the Articles of Confederation, amended in those particulars in which Henry, and Grayson, and Jefferson admitted they needed reform, with the addition, I conceive, of a sectional