Beauregard and Johnston and Longstreet, and such sacrifices as have been shown by the soldiers who fought under them, has fairly won its place among the nations. Another feeling survives in the South which is of value-the love to their own State. A man did not cease to be a Virginian, because he was an American. The Carolinian might be proud of the Union, but he was passionately attached to the flag of Carolina. The Southern song, "My Maryland," was sung with trembling emotion. No doubt this sentiment leads easily to separation; but it is a safeguard against arbitrary power. No Southern man would bear the tyranny which now overrides law and right in the North. There is another sentiment in the South which we find it hard to explain-the deep religious feeling. The piety of Stonewall Jackson was fervent; not the less so of Lee. It is attributed, doubtless rightly, to President Davis. Whence is this? How is it to be accounted for? Before the anomalies of their social system, it stands out a singular problem. What shall we say? Shall we underrate the evil and the moral taint of slavery? We dare not. We believe it to be marked with God's curse. It implies moral debasement, and leads to it. Bad for the slave, even more pernicious to the master. We state the facts, and leave them. The union of all the ministers of religion in the South with their people is a fact, certain and significant. This at least seems to follow, that the warning of Scripture is sound, that the love of money is the root of all evil; and that, when compared with the guilt of other iniquities, the tree, that springs from this tap root, bears the foulest fruits. On the question of slavery, Dr. Nichols gives us his opinion at large. It is, as we should expect, favourable to the institution. His exposure of gross exaggerations, and his view of the kindly treatment and physical enjoyment of the negro in the South, we think correct. The war has proved that vast bodies of the negroes like their condition, are attached to their owners, and have no wish to leave their country. Even the numbers of negroes who have fled from the South do not indicate correctly the extent of negro dissatisfaction. For many left, as our servants leave their places, from the vague hope of bettering themselves. They have been bitterly disappointed. But other writers have shown us what evils lie hid under this condition of the negro race in its best estate; what degradation, arising from dependence; what idleness; what desultory and profitless labour; how enormous is the price which the Southern planter pays for ill-done work. The longersighted proprietors in the South would only be too glad to get rid of the system, and to substitute another, free from the inherent evils of slavery. But it is one of the consequences of a great national evil to make the remedial process slow and hard. The authorities of the North, when confronted just now with the system at New Orleans, grappled with it and failed. Having declared the negroes free, and found them reckless and indolent, they were driven, in order to keep a labouring class, to reinstate them in a rigorous servitude. That some scheme, such as our Parliament attempted in the apprenticeship of the West Indian slaves, would be necessary to carry the working class through the transition into the industry which is necessary, we are inclined to believe; and it will be, perhaps, the best fruit of this hateful war, if it shall lead the South, observing that it is vain to preserve slavery, when only a river or an imaginary line separates the negro from freedom, to set its statesmen to work to consider how they can devise a prudent scheme for its gradual extirpation. If they will enter on this policy, they will carry with them the sympathies of England and the prayers of all Christian men. For ourselves, we will not disguise our convictions or our hopes. We have no antipathy to our Northern brethren. We have sincere friendships with several of them. For their Christian writers and Christian works of good we cherish a grateful regard. But the evils of their government are as fixed as ever stained the ancient republics of Greece, and on a far grander scale. The system of corruption is more complete and organised. Such a republic, the powers and offices of which are wielded by the basest of the community, must soon have fallen foul of other nations, either from a hurricane of popular passion, or in order to find a vent for domestic licentiousness. Whatever forbearance England might have used, we should, at no distant period, have been driven into war. The American doctrine, that that great continent is given over to them, and that every European, who set his foot there, is an intruder, is a standing declaration of war with Europe-with England, of imminent war. Unless we were prepared to sacrifice our own settlers in Canada, and see our race driven from Columbia as far north as the Pole, hostilities must have ensued. That this violent disruption has come-not by any act of ours, but by internal causes-is an event which England must contemplate with the sentiment of relief from a great danger. We draw breath, and hope for peace. We recal the words of an attentive observer, who travelled some years ago through the States, in the retinue of the Prince of Wales, and who said then that, perceiving the passions, the corruption, and the ambition of that turbulent population, he looked on that fierce democracy as the most formidable confederacy he had ever imagined against the peace of the world. Just as the Colossus was bestriding the transatlantic conti nent, and ready to hurl its bolts into the heart of Europe, a mightier hand than that of England touched it, and it dissolved. We cannot profess to wish that the iron image should ever be welded again. Its separate parts will form great nations. The Southern Commonwealth is already forming, through a sore discipline. It will, we expect, consolidate its power. We trust it will cast out of its breast the germs of that disease which injures it. We should not wonder, nor should we grieve, if another State rose in the north-west, and rivalled in population and wealth the older states of the seaboard. Already we see the same causes of jealousy and discord springing up, which led to the first enmity of the South and North. The interests of agricultural states are sacrificed to the tariffs of the maritime states. The North will have given to each of these nations, when they arise, important lessons,lessons, however, of warning rather than of example. It will have warned them that there is no worse basis for a polity which seeks to be lasting, or peaceful, or pure, than universal suffrage; for this shuts out of power the upright and intelligent classes, in order to place power in the hands of the illiterate and the corrupt, who monopolize and abuse it. One of the latest writings of our eloquent Macaulay was to denounce the democracy which grew out of the intrigues of Jefferson. De Tocqueville has more fully explained and expressed the snares of its vices. Europe ought not to lose the instructive lesson. So far from flattering the passions of the North, or imitating their system, England ought to regard the Northern States with watchful attention; and though we stand aloof from the belligerents as impartial spectators, we ought not to disguise the sentiment which prevails, with a memorable agreement, among us, that while we pray that peace may soon be restored to America, we neither wish nor expect it except through separation. ON THE TEST OF GREATNESS AMONG MEN. WHо are the greatest men that have ever lived upon tho face of the earth? How various the answers would be to this inquiry, and how difficult it would be to fill up a specified number with anything like discrimination! The selection would depend upon the knowledge, the moral character, and the country of those who had to decide. Perhaps no one ac quainted with ancient history would omit Julius Caesar; and yet how degrading the personal and political vices and crimes of which we know this foremost man of all the world to have been guilty. Even as to Cæsar himself, if we write his name among the first, we do it with shame. No Frenchman would omit Napoleon. And we hope there would not be any of the English lists without the Duke of Wellington, and not many without the name of William the Third. But we intend to speak of greatness of a different kind from that which would give us these names as the chief; though we esteem the character of each of the illustrious men who have added to our English renown, as deserving of the highest honour, on grounds approaching the nature of the only real superiority. The Duke of Wellington has strong claims on the gratitude of his country, for the self-control and devotedness to duty which so deeply marked all his public conduct. We have no doubt that the tone of public morals has been raised in this country by the straightforwardness of his character and example. We believe, also, that this is generally recognized as the fact. And long may this benefit be continued to us. And when we contrast the comparatively small means he had to work with, and the great and enduring results of his victories-peace for half a century, and a high place among the nations-we know of few men more deserving the real gratitude of Englishmen than the Duke of Wellington. In describing him, we have been led to indicate how we estimate greatness. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings." These words of our great moralist have always been regarded with admiration. Do they relate only to man's intelligence? How much more forcible are they as applied to his moral nature; and how much more forcible still when applied to his religious being. In the day when God (Acts xvii. 31) will judge the world in righteousness, no man will stand the test unless he have been one on whom the distant and the future has predominated over the present. And it is the Bible alone which reveals to us the future. Life and immortality have been brought to light by the Gospel. Pascal notices that there are three kinds of greatness-(1) of wealth and station; (2) of intellect; and (3) of virtue; and whilst the world idolizes the first and second, it quite overlooks the third. And our own Bishop Butler has expressed the same idea more gently, but not less forcibly, in his sermons on the Love of God:-"Let the man of ambition go on still to consider disgrace as the greatest evil, honour as the greatest good. But disgrace, in whose estimation? honour, in whose judgment? that is the only question. If shame, and delight in esteem, be spoken of as real, as any settled ground of pain or pleasure, both these must be in proportion to the supposed wisdom and worth of him by whom we are condemned or esteemed. Must it then be thought enthusiastic to speak of a sensibility of this sort which shall have respect to unerring judgment, to infinite wisdom, when we are assured that this unerring judgment, this infinite wisdom, does observe upon There is, then, a balance of the sanctuary by which, in that future to which we must come, our nature will be tried. Does it seem strange to us to resort to that rule now? But can we help it, unless we reverse the wisdom of the moralist, and shrink from being withdrawn from the power of our senses, and deem it right to let the present predominate over the distant and the future? We shall not, in endeavouring to trace what is really great, take such a retrograde course, but shall account the testimony of God Himself the true proof of greatness even in the present life. Who, then, are the foremost when this is the standard? "Verily, I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist" (Matt. xi. 11). And could we have a more striking example of the power of the future over the present? Clothed in a raiment of camel's hair, sustaining life on locusts and wild honey, he bursts upon the people of Judæa, saying, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand!" Cast into prison through the tyranny and vices of the vilest of mankind, he is immediately recognised by Deity itself as the greatest born of women.* And who will gainsay that judgment? Let us rather humbly reverence the sentence which stamps this lofty character on his zeal, his boldness, and his fidelity in rebuking sin, and proclaiming the coming Saviour. His office also was great-the forerunner of our Lord: not merely to herald His approach, but to precede Him in the first assault upon the corruption, the hardness of heart, and the unbelief which withstood the mercy and mission of the Saviour Himself. As far as greatness is created or recognised by kings, there is no greater proof of it than being called into counsel with the sovereign, and being permitted to modify his plans, and especially being considered as important enough to save others from his personal displeasure when it is hot, or as the most likely to have done it if it had been possible. Do we then find among our fellow-creatures any who have enjoyed this honour, even from God Himself? Our minds at once turn to five men, eminent for different graces, but joined together by this testimony to their pre-eminence; by which, if we may so express it, God Himself shows how high they ranked in His estimation. "Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people" (Jer. xv. 1). Of course we do not forget the context, "Notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of Heaven is greater than he;" but this is so generally understood of the spiritual advantages of the Redeemer's kingdom, that we feel at liberty to take the earlier part of the |
