France,—­Jack Cade and Wat Tyler in England,—­Nana Sahib and the Sepoys in India,—­Toussaint l’Ouverture and the Haytiens,—­and, finally, the insurrection of Nat Turner in this country, with those in Guiana, Jamaica, and St. Lucia:  such examples, running through all history, point the same moral.  This last result of the Cotton dynasty may come at any moment after the time shall once have arrived when, throughout any great tract of country, the suppressing force shall temporarily, with all the advantages of mastership, including intelligence and weapons, be unequal to coping with the force suppressed.  That time may still be far off.  Whether it be or not depends upon questions of government and the events of the chapter of accidents.  If the Union should now be dissolved, and civil convulsions should follow, it may soon be upon us.  But the superimposed force is yet too great under any circumstances, and the convulsion would probably be but temporary.  At present, too, the value of the slave insures him tolerable treatment; but, as numbers increase, this value must diminish.  Southern statesmen now assert that in thirty years there will be twelve million slaves in the South; and then, with increased numbers, why should not the philosophy of the sugar-plantation prevail, and it become part of the economy of the Cotton creed, that it is cheaper to work slaves to death and purchase fresh ones than to preserve their usefulness by moderate employment?  Then the value of the slave will no longer protect him, and then the end will be nigh.  Is this thirty or fifty years off?  Perhaps not for a century hence will the policy of King Cotton work its legitimate results, and the volcano at length come to its head and defy all compression.

In one of the stories of the “Arabian Nights” we are told of an Afrite confined by King Solomon in a brazen vessel; and the Sultana tells us, that, during the first century of his confinement, he said in his heart,—­“I will enrich whosoever will liberate me”; but no one liberated him.  In the second century he said,—­“Whosoever will liberate me, I will open to him the treasures of the earth”; but no one liberated him.  And four centuries more passed, and he said,—­“Whosoever shall liberate me, I will fulfil for him three wishes”; but still no one liberated him.  Then despair at his long bondage took possession of his soul, and, in the eighth century, he swore,—­“Whosoever shall liberate me, him will I surely slay!” Let the Southern statesmen look to it well that the breaking of the seal which confines our Afrite be not deferred till long bondage has turned his heart, like the heart of the Spirit in the fable, into gall and wormwood; lest, if the breaking of that seal be deferred to the eighth or even the sixth century, it result to our descendants like the breaking of the sixth seal of Revelation,—­“And, lo! there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, and