By the side of audacity, prudence has played its part.  It has taken good care not to unfurl its flag, it has made itself small, modest, moderate, as much so, at least, as the passions of the mob would permit; it asked nothing, in truth, but to live honestly in a corner of the globe.  Who speaks, then, of conquests?  Who would wish to re-establish the African slave trade on a large scale?  Far from being retrogrades, the men of the South are champions of progress; witness their programme of commercial freedom!  Are there no honest men to be found in the North, to restrain Mr. Lincoln, and to prevent him from oppressing them?  Are there no governments in Europe that can interpose, and recommend the maintenance of peace?  Is not this peace, which prevents the insurrections of negroes, and the destruction of cotton, for the interest of all?  Why should there not be two Confederacies, living side by side, as good friends?

It is evident that the able party tend to this, and that the violent have allowed them to give, for the common interest, this subdued tone to the insurrectionary movement.  The able party know too well what a prolonged war would be to desire it.  They prepare for it in the hope, if not to avoid it entirely, at least to prevent its duration, and to obtain at once, in behalf of Southern secession, that species of security which is conferred in our times by the deed accomplished.  Perhaps the United States, yielding to a sentiment which certainly has something honourable in it, will allow the Confederacy of the Gulf States to subsist, rather than crush it, which would be but too easy, by bringing upon it a war which would be accompanied by slave insurrections.  Let us not be in haste to blame such a course; let us remember that the whole world is prompting in this direction, that all the counsels given to Mr. Lincoln, in the Old World as in the New, begin invariably with the words:  “Strive to avoid civil war;” let us remember also that, to solve the American problem, much more time will be needed than we imagine in Europe; let us endeavor to put ourselves in the place of those who see things as they are, and who find themselves in a struggle with the difficulties.

Patience will doubtless have here its great inconveniencies; the Confederacy of the cotton States, if combated without vigor, will seem the living proof of the right of separation; it will be an asylum all prepared, in which the discontented border States can take refuge at need.  Nevertheless the question is to tolerate this Confederacy, but by no means to recognize the legitimacy of the act which gave it birth; the question is to make use of a generous forbearance, to which new threats of secession will necessarily put an end.  Then, is it nothing to manifest a spirit of peace fitted to touch the most prejudiced, to bind the majority of the border States to the destinies of the Union, to give evidence of the distinction which exists between them and the extreme South, to force them, in fine,