its workings are forced inward.  What remedy is that which leaves a false and pernicious policy—­a policy in avowed war with the whole spirit of our civilization and in open hostility to our whole experiment as a government—­in full working, almost a religious creed with near one-half of our people?  As a remedy, this would be but a quack medicine at the best.  The cure must be a more thorough one.  The remedy we must look for—­the only one which can meet the exigencies of the case—­must be one which will restore to the South the attributes of a democracy.  It must cause our Southern brethren of their own free will to reverse their steps,—­to return from their divergence.  It must teach them a purer Christianity, a truer philosophy, a sounder economy.  It must lead them to new paths of industry.  It must gently persuade them that a true national prosperity is not the result of a total abandonment of the community to the culture of one staple.  It must make them self-dependent, so that no longer they shall have to import their corn from the Northwest, their lumber-men and hay from Maine, their manufactures from Massachusetts, their minerals from Pennsylvania, and to employ the shipping of the world.  Finally, it must make it impossible for one overgrown interest to plunge the whole community unresistingly into frantic rebellion or needless war.  They must learn that a well-conditioned state is, so far as may be, perfect in itself,—­and, to be perfect in itself, must be intelligent and free.  When these lessons are taught to the South, then will their divergence cease, and they will enter upon a new path of enjoyment, prosperity, and permanence.  The world at present pays them an annual bribe of some $65,000,000 to learn none of these lessons.  Their material interest teaches them to bow down to the shrine of King Cotton.  Here, then, lies the remedy with the disease.  The prosperity of the country in general, and of the South in particular, demands that the reign of King Cotton should cease,—­that his dynasty should be destroyed.  This result can be obtained but in one way, and that seemingly ruinous.  The present monopoly in their great staple commodity enjoyed by the South must be destroyed, and forever.  This result every patriot and well-wisher of the South should ever long for; and yet, by every Southern statesman and philosopher, it is regarded as the one irremediable evil possible to their country.  What miserable economy! what feeble foresight!  What principle of political economy is better established than that a monopoly is a curse to both producer and consumer?  To the first it pays a premium on fraud, sloth, and negligence; and to the second it supplies the worst possible article, in the worst possible way, at the highest possible price.  In agriculture, in manufactures, in the professions, and in the arts, it is the greatest bar to improvement with which any branch of industry can be cursed.  The South is now showing to the world an example of a great people borne down, crushed