But the two volumes are full of power and feeling.  They are written so that all may read.  Their effect is popular, without stooping deliberately to become so.  They are among the brightest and simplest pages which this exciting period has produced.  It would be a great mistake to gauge their effect by what they bring to pass in the minds of cabinet-officers, editors, and party-leaders:  for they put into plain, stout language the growing instinct of the people to get at the cause of the war which lays them waste.

Some of the most effective pages in these volumes are those which lament the dread alternative of war, and which show that emancipation would be merciful to all classes at the South.  It is no paradox that to free the slaves to-morrow would restore health to the South and regenerate its people.

And we are glad that Mr. Conway speaks so emphatically against that measure of colonization, whether the proposition be to deport the contrabands to Hayti, or to tote them away to Central America under the leadership of intelligent colored representatives of the North.  All these are plans which look to the eventual removal of the only men at the South who know how to labor, and who are now the only representatives there of the country’s industrial ideas.  We pray you, Mr. President, to use the money voted for colonizing purposes to rid the country of the men in the Border and Cotton States who cannot or will not work, slave-owners and bushwhackers, who kill and harry, but who never did an honest stroke of work in their lives, and whom, with or without slavery, this Republic will have to support.  Take some Pacific Island for a great Alms-House, and inaugurate an exodus of the genuine Southern pauper; he is only an incumbrance to the industrious and humble-minded blacks, from whose toil the country may draw the staples of free sugar and free cotton, raised upon the soil which is theirs by the holy prescription of blood and sorrow.  “If it were not for your presence in the country,” says the President to the colored men, “we should have no war!” If it were not for silverware and jewelry, no burglaries would be committed!  Don’t let us get rid of the villains, but of the victims; thereby villainy will cease!

Let Mr. Pomeroy be sent to annex some of the Paumotu or Tongan groups, where spontaneous bread-fruit would afford Mr. Floyd good plucking, and Messrs. Wigfall, Benjamin, and Prior could even have their chewing done by proxy, for the native pauper employs the old women to masticate his Ava into drink.  There they might continue to take their food from other people’s mouths, with the chance now and then of a strong anti-slavery clergyman well barbecued, a luxury for which they have howled for many a year.  That is the place for your oligarchic pauper, where the elements themselves are field-hands, with Nature for overseer, manufactures superfluous and free-trade a blessing, and plenty of colored persons to raise the mischief with.  That is the sole crop which they have raised at home.  Let their propensities be transferred to a place unconnected with the politics or the privileges of a Christian Republic.