Looking only at the province of interests, is it easy to imagine an irremediable rupture between New York and Charleston, between the valley of the Mississippi and New Orleans?  What would the valley of the Mississippi be without New Orleans, and New Orleans, isolated from the vast country of which it is the natural market?  Can you fancy New York renouncing half her commerce, ceasing to be the broker of cotton, the necessary medium between the South and Europe?  Can you fancy the South deprived of the intervention and credit which New York assures her?  The dependence of the North and the South is reciprocal; if the South produces the cotton, it is the North which furnishes the advances, then purchases on its own account or on commission, and expedites the traffic with Europe.  In the United States, every part has need of the whole; agricultural States, manufacturing States, commercial States, they form together one of the most homogeneous countries of which I know.  I should be surprised if such a country were destined to become forever dismembered, and that, too, at an epoch less favorable to the dismemberment of great nations than to the absorption of small ones.

Shall I say all that I think?  When Anglo-Saxons are in question, we Latins are apt to deceive ourselves terribly; one would not risk much, perhaps, in supposing that events would take place precisely in the reverse of our hypothesis.  We have loudly predicted in Europe the end of the United States, the birth and progress of a rival Confederacy, an irremediable separation:  is not this a reason for supposing that there will be ultimately neither a prolonged separation, nor a rival Confederacy worthy of consideration?  Free countries, especially those of the English race, have a habit of which we know little:  their words are exceedingly violent, and their actions exceedingly circumspect.  They make a great noise:  one would say that every thing was going to destruction; but it is prudent to look at them more closely, for these countries of discussion are also countries of compromise, the victors are accustomed to terminate political crises by yielding something of their victory; in appearance, it is true, rather than in reality.  Fully decided at heart, they consent willingly to appear less positive in form.

Here, I know that the extreme violence of the South renders a compromise very difficult, at least a present compromise.  As it is accustomed to rule, and will be content with no less, as it knows that the North, decidedly emancipated, will not replace its head beneath the yoke, it seems resolved to incur all risks rather than renounce its fixed idea.  For two months, the probabilities of compromise have been becoming constantly weaker.  But if we have scarcely a right to count on them now, so far as the Gulf States are concerned, we must remember that the border States are at hand, that they are hesitating between the North and the South, and that certain concessions may be made to them, to prevent their separation.