fight, in which the combatants eat each other up and not a tip end of a tail is left. There is abundance in the United States Constitution to justify the States rights construction, and quite enough in it to satisfy the most thorough consolidationist. No wonder Hayne and Webster "ate each other." To do so was the naturalest and simplest logical operation imaginable.

NORTHERN NATIONAL DEBT.-Doctor Johnson, although he liked Goldsmith, underrated his abilities whilst he lived and probably overrated them after his death. The thing happened in this wise: Goldsmith made Johnson his executor, and Johnson could find no estate, but discovered an enormous amount of indebtedness. He was forthwith struck with wonder, amazement and admiration at the fertility of expedient and wonderful genius of a poor author who had run up a debt of twenty thousand pounds. It was an indisputable monument of greatness which he bequeated to posterity. It was surprising! prodigious! And from that day forth Johnson ceased to dub Goldsmith Doctor Minimus, and learned to venerate his memory.

The North, 'tis said, has run in debt largely over a thousand millions within the last twelve months, and is now incurring debt at the rate of five millions a day. This beats Goldsmith all hollow, and John Bull is seized with profounder admiration than was Executor Johnson on occasion first aforesaid. Never before did nation run in debt with equal facility, and we venture to predict that they will get out of debt with still greater facility; wipe it off as fast and easily as truant schoolboy wipes off figures from his slate. National bankruptcy at the North is inevitable and desirable; desirable, because the payment of the interest on their national debt would impose an intolerable burden on the laboring class, for it is the laboring class alone who pay taxes, because they create all values. The holders of the national debt would be masters and the laborers slaves, if the debt be not repudiated. If repudiated, the North as a whole would be no poorer; nay, she would be richer, because hundreds of thousands of idlers, who would otherwise live on the dividends of Government stock, would be compelled to become productive laborers, and the wealth is best measured by the amount of its productive labor. Repudiation would go far to ruin the now wealthy classes, but as it would tend to bring about social democratic equality, the rich, who are generally socialists, should not complain of it.

The North can carry on the war after national bankruptcy just as well as before, if she can procure enough of men and munitions of war. This she can if her own people will credit the Government, and take its paper issues as money; and further provided there is enough surplus labor at the North to support the people who remain at home, and equip and support their enormous army and fleet. We do not believe they have sufficient surplus labor to carry on a war like the present for a year longer; but we are sure that a very few months will so cripple the credit of government, as to render its paper issues unavailable as money. The rich must see that a slow, silent, but sure process of

agrarianism is being carried on by means of the accumulation of a national debt hereafter to be repudiated; and they will refuse longer to lend or to credit the government. So soon as this happens the war must cease, and occur it must very shortly. We maintained from the first that we could only succeed in this war by exhausting the strength of the North, not by defeating her armies or by invading her territories. It is much better to hold her armies at bay, to checkmate them than to defeat them, for defeat exasperates her and incites to redoubled exertions.

ASPECT OF THE WAR.-The three great armies of the North are the one under Halleck, Grant and Buell in the southwest, the one in the peninsula under McClellan, and one opposite Fredericksburg commanded by McDowell. It is not very improbable that each of these armies may endeavor to retire without fighting. If they evince a disposition to do so, we think the war would be sooner ended by permitting them to retire unmolested, than by defeating them. Such retreats would be a distinct admission that the South was unconquerable, and the North might make peace without loss of honor. But if we defeat those armies it will exasperate the whole North and unite their people in the further prosecution of the war in order to redeem their tarnished reputation, however hopeless they may deem the conquest of the South. There is yet a stronger reason for the course we indicate. Humanity demands that we shall win, if we can, bloodless victories rather than bloody ones. To defeat these three armies in open combat will cost oceans of the best blood of the South, and we should not shed a drop of it unnecessarily.

If the Yankee army in the southwest does not retire before the fall of the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, it will ultimately be defeated and captured, no matter how many victories it may win for a time. Each of its victories will diminish its strength and numbers, and it will be too far from home to recruit its strength. Defeats will but nerve us to greater exertions, and our losses will be easily repaired from the population around us.

Should an army attempt to march from Fredericksburg to Richmond, it will be cut to pieces very soon after it gets out of reach of its gunboats. We doubt whether it will dare cross the Rappahannock.

Richmond may possibly be taken by gunboats coming up the James River, but if McClellan succeeds by aid of those boats in getting his army here, we feel pretty confident he will never get it away from here, except as prisoners of war. It is rash to attempt to predict what a day may bring forth, but not so difficult or presumptuous to foretell the more distant future. The lights of history are a safe guide in enabling us to ascertain beforehand with an approximation to truth what will be the ultimate result of a war like the present. We know the South cannot be subjugated, and we feel confident that in a few more weeks the North will itself be satisfied of this, and that if the war does not cease, it will at least dwindle to insignificant proportions. This artcle will not see the light until our predictions are fulfilled or falsified. At

any event it may be interesting hereafter to see what were the hopes, expectations and apprehensions of a Southerner at this critical moment. We write on the 25th of April, and have just heard that two Federal gunboats have passed Fort Jackson, and that McClellan, foiled in the peninsula, is withdrawing his forces to the Rappahannock, to proceed from thence to Richmond by land. Nothing but desperation, it seems to us, could induce him to resort to such a scheme. In the peninsula he has an excellent base of operations; on the Rappahannock he will have none, and will besides have to cross two rivers before he gets to Richmond. We don't believe he will attempt, and doubt much whether the Federal army on the north side of the river near Fredericksburg, will ever attempt to cross that river.

We hope New Orleans will not be taken, but if the people east and west of the river can fight their own battles without aid from the opposite side. The summer crops will soon be ripe in the south, and each section produces all the absolute necessaries of life in abundance. Breaking up of railroads may starve an invading enemy, but cannot starve us.

As the enemy attacks the interior we move and concentrate our troops much more rapidly than they do. We have only to sacrifice towns on the seacoast of minor importance, by withdrawing our troops from them, and we can readily meet their three grand invading armies with superior forces. This policy, we think, the Administration, aided by an able Cabinet, and Generals of great strategic ability, is now carrying out with wonderful rapidity and efficiency. Until now this could not be done, both because a land invasion had not fairly begun, and because the people did not see the necessity of the temporary sacrifices of territory which such a policy involves.

This war has been conducted by the South with great ability from the first. When it began the North only threatened to put in the field some two hundred thousand men. She took the initiative, begun the war, yet by the middle of July last we had as many troops in the field as she. After the battle of Manassas, as was natural, we relaxed our exertions, and were content with enlistments for a year, because we believed the war would not last longer than a year. But the North, regardless of incurring national bankruptcy, brought thereafter into the field a force larger than had ever before been levied from a population of her numbers. Such conduct on her part could hardly have been anticipated by our rulers, because it was without precedent in the history of nations. But had it been anticipated, ours is a popular government, and it was not until after the fall of Fort Donelson that our people became roused to the necessities of the occasion, and willing to make the sacrifices that the emergency required. Until then it would have been in vain for our governments, State or Federal, to have called out anything like a levy en masse. That is now done, and we have a force in the field quite large enough to cope with and conquer our enemies, if we could only get at them. Taking our cities subjects us to privations for a time, but rather increases than diminishes our military strength.

Men see now that to be restored to their properties they must win them back by force of arms. We shall gather courage from despair. Our people, our soldiers, and our civil rulers have acted wisely and bravely throughout this war. We had no navy, and a navy cannot be improvised. Hence our disasters. But navies cannot conquer the broad domain of the South. We again undertake to prophesy and predict that the South will soon exhibit, in her conduct of the war, an example of the moral sublime, unsurpassed in modern times, and that her struggle will be crowned with speedy and glorious success.

April 26. Yesterday was a day of gloomy despondency here in Richmond; not however a day of panic like those that succeeded the fall of Donelson. People have become used to and hardened by reverses. Probably if they had arms in their hands, instead of indulging in useless repinings, they would be eager to repair in battle the losses which they have sustained. Brave men often quail before disasters which no courage or exertion can avert. In such circumstances women display more firmness than men. They are now less disgusted and despondent than most of the men. Yesterday it was rumored that New Orleans had fallen. The report seems confirmed by telegraphic dispatches; nevertheless we doubt it. But be it so! What else had we to expect when the war began? We had no navy, the enemy a large and powerful one, and the best mercantile marine in the world, ready to be converted into a navy. We ought to have deemed it probable, almost inevitable, that wherever ships or gunboats could reach we should be defeated. The wonder is it was not done sooner. Our successes by land, when they were out of reach of their vessels, have been far more remarkable and uninterrupted than theirs by water. Not a twentieth of our vast Southern domain adjoins the seashore or the banks of navigable rivers. If they take all of our seacost and river towns, it will but concentrate our forces, which are now scattered at a hundred points, vainly attempting to defend by land towns attacked by water. And when they capture those towns they must divert a large part of their force to occupy and hold them. Thus we shall be strengthened and they weakened.

FREE TRADE.-It is now obvious that the leading European powers will not intervene in American affairs until both North and South are crippled and exhausted by long continuance of hostilities; when they hope to impose terms of peace degrading to both belligerents, and redounding to the advantage of the intervening powers. This course of conduct is very natural, and we should be prepared to meet it.

It is probable that England and France would require of the South as the price of intervention that for a long series of years, the products of those countries should be introduced into the South free of duty, and that no export duties should be imposed on Southern products sent those countries.

This would place us in precisely the same abject subjection to France and England that Ireland now suffers from a similar relation with England. The evils that oppress and pauperize Ireland arise solely

from free trade wth England. Capital, skill, science, fashion have all quit Ireland and are all centralised in England. Ireland belongs to men who live in England, and who tax and exploitate Irish labor to spend or accumulate the results in England. Shallow thinkers have long held that absenteeism was the great cause of Irish poverty, ignorance and misery; but absenteeism is the necessary result of free trade between two nations, the one possessing many advantages and attractions as a residence, the other very few.

Under the late Union the South by means of free trade was exploited by the North just as Ireland is by England. Will our rulers never learn the meaning of the term exploitation? Will they never learn that in the war of free trade, the war of the wits, the war of making bargains, where unequals meet, the weaker must go to the wall?

Will they

never learn that the people who till the earth, are always cheated (exploited) when they deal with mechanics, manufacturers, merchants, artists and professional men, because the former exchange a great deal of the results of their hard labor, for a little of the results of the light labor of the latter? Do they not know if our dealings with England and the North be not trammelled by high duties we shall be their slaves and dependents? Does not this war teach us that too much of free trade has made us absolutely dependent on foreign nations for some of the necessaries of life and for the munitions of war?

Above all, do they not know that the free trade or laissez faire doctrine, is simply, purely, entirely and historically an abolition doctrine? That it grew up out of the liberation of the European serfs which placed men in condition of competition, antagonism and seeming equality?

The Confederate Constitution gives scope enough to remedy this monster evil, if Congress will wisely exercise the power vested in it. With the consent of Congress any State may "lay imposts or duties on imports or exports." Let Congress at once give permission to every State to lay such imposts or duties on imports as it pleases, and the evil will be remedied without begetting sectional injustice. The border States, and probably North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, will impose State duties to protect manufactures, and thus national independence will be secured without resort to an unfair, unequal and sectionally oppressive measure like the United States Protective tariff. Domestic industry should be left to State regulation.

The nations of Europe have no sympathy for us. They are inimical to our slave institutions, and equally inimical to our republican form of government. They would be glad to see the North become a monarchy, the Southern slaves liberated, and the South itself made a subject province of the North. They have spurned the boon of free trade which we offered to them, and are ready to submit to the prohibitory duties of the North. We can readily produce all the necessaries and luxuries of life within ourselves, and our territory is large enough for a world within itself. We want neither foreigners nor foreign notions among us. The former have generally proved traitors, and the latter

VOL. VIII.-NO. I.

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