We do not believe that the danger is so great as it appears.  Rumor is like one of those multiplying-mirrors that make a mob of shadows out of one real object.  The interests of three-fifths of the Slave-holding States are diametrically opposed to secession; so are those of five-sixths of the people of the seceding States, if they did but know it.  The difficulties in the way of organizing a new form of government are great, almost insuperable; the expenses enormous.  As the public burdens grow heavier, the lesson of resistance and rebellion will find its aptest scholars in the non-slave-owning majority who will be paying taxes for the support of the very institution that has made and keeps them poor.  Men are not long in arriving at just notions of the value of what they pay for, especially when it is for other people.  Taxes are a price that people are slowest to pay for a cat in a bag.  If matters are allowed to take their own course for a little longer, the inevitable reaction is sure to set in.  The Hartford Convention gave more uneasiness to the Government and the country than the present movement in the South, but the result of it was the ruin of the Federal Party, and not of the Federal Union.

Even if the secessionists could accomplish their schemes, who would be the losers?  Not the Free States, certainly, with their variety of resources and industry.  The laws of trade cannot be changed, and the same causes which have built up their agriculture, commerce, and manufactures will not cease to be operative.  The real wealth and strength of states, other things being equal, depends upon homogeneousness of population and variety of occupation, with a common interest and common habits of thought.  The cotton-growing States, with their single staple, are at the mercy of chance.  India, Australia, nay, Africa herself, may cut the thread of their prosperity.  Their population consists of two hostile races, and their bone and muscle, instead of being the partners, are the unwilling tools of their capital and intellect.  The logical consequence of this political theory is despotism, which the necessity of coercing the subject race will make a military one.  Already South Carolina is discussing a standing army.  If history is not a lying gossip, the result of the system of labor will be Jamaica, and that of the system of polity, Mexico.  Instead of a stable government, they will have a whirligig of pronunciamientos, or stability will be purchased at a cost that will make it intolerable.  They have succeeded in establishing among themselves a fatal unanimity on the question of Slavery,—­fatal because it makes the office of spy and informer honorable, makes the caprice of a mob the arbiter of thought, speech, and action, and debases public opinion to a muddy mixture of fear and prejudice.  In peace, the majority of their population will be always looked on as conspirators; in war, they would become rebels.