The result described is inevitable, should the Secessionists dare to tempt the ordeal by battle long enough.  If it stop short of this, it will be because the prestige of Southern military power is so easily broken down that there is no temptation to declare the Adams policy.  But even this consummation must have the most momentous results, and entirely modify the whole anti-slavery movement of the nation.  Should the war cease to-morrow, it has inaugurated a new era in our nation’s history.  The folly of the Gulf States, in throwing away a political condition where the conservative sentiment stood by them only too well, must inevitably recoil on their own heads, whether the strife last a day or a generation.  No man can estimate the new measures and combinations to which it is destined to give rise.  There stands the Constitution, with all its severe conditions,—­severe or weak, however, according to its interpretations;—­which interpretations, again, will always prove plastic before the popular will.  The popular will is plainly destined to a change; and who dare predict the results of its changing?  The scrupulous may still hold by the letter of the bond; but since the South has confessedly prized all legal guaranties only for the sake of Slavery, the North, once free to act, will long to construe them, up to the very verge of faith, in the interest of Liberty.  Was the original compromise, a Shylock bond?—­the war has been our Portia.  Slavery long ruled the nation politically.  The nation rose and conquered it with votes.  With desperate disloyalty, Slavery struck down all political safeguards, and appealed to arms.  The nation has risen again, ready to meet it with any weapons, sure to conquer with any Twice conquered, what further claim will this defeated desperado have?  If it was a disturbing element before, and so put under restriction, shall it be spared when it has openly proclaimed itself a destroying element also?  Is this to be the last of American civil wars, or only the first one?  These are the questions which will haunt men’s minds, when the cannon are all bushed, and the bells are pealing peace, and the sons of our hearth-stones come home.  The watchword “Irrepressible Conflict” only gave the key, but War has flung the door wide open, and four million slaves stand ready to file through.  It is merely a question of time, circumstance, and method.  There is not a statesman so wise but this war has given him new light, nor an Abolitionist so self-confident but must own its promise better than his foresight.  Henceforth, the first duty of an American legislator must be, by the use of all legitimate means, to weaken Slavery. Delenda est Servitudo.  What the peace which the South has broken was not doing, the war which she has instituted must secure.

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THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE.