at the North.  We can have no such class.  The very collision of interests, the rivalries of trade, the thousand-and-one social relations, all neutralize each other, are checks and counterchecks, which, like the particles in a vessel of water, always tend toward the level of an equilibrium.  Two men meet in their lodge as Odd-Fellows, but they are opponents on “town-meeting day.”  Two partners in business are, one the most bitter of Calvinists, and the other the most progressive of Universalists.  Dr. A. and the Rev. Mr. B. pull asunder the men whom ’Change unites.  But with the Southerner of the governing class it is not so.  One sympathy, more potent than any other can be, leagues them all.  All are masters of the Helot race upon which their success and station are built.  It is a living relation, the most powerful and vital which can bind men together, that sense of authority borne by the few over the many.

The Norman barons after the Conquest, the Spanish conquerors in Mexico and Peru, the Englishmen of the days of Clive and Hastings in India, are all examples of that thorough concentration of strength which must arise in the conflicts of races.  Republics have fallen through their standing armies.  The proprietary class at the South was the most dangerous of standing armies, for it was disciplined to the use of power night and day.  The overthrow of the Rebellion will to a great degree ruin this class.  But since it is one not founded on birth or culture, but simply on white blood and circumstance, (for no Secessionist is so fierce as your converted Northerner,) it cannot fall like the Norman nobility in the Wars of the Roses, or waste by operation of climate like the masters of Mexico and Hindostan.  It renews itself whenever it touches slave-soil.  That gives it life.  We contend that Government must for its own preservation go to the root of the matter.  And we cannot see that there is any Constitutional difficulty.  There are probably not ten slave-proprietors in the South whom it has not the right to arrest, try, and hang, for high-treason.  Of course, every one can see the practical difficulty, as well as the manifest folly, of doing this.  But if it has that right toward these individuals, it certainly may say, by Act of Congress, if we choose, that it will not waive it except upon conditions which shall secure it from any further trouble.  It seems to us fully within our power.  And we will use an illustration that may help to show what we mean.  President Lincoln has no right to require of any citizen of the United States that he take the temperance-pledge.  But suppose a murderer who has taken life in a fit of drunkenness applies for pardon to the Executive.  The Executive, Governor or President, as the case may be, may surely then impose that condition before commuting the sentence or releasing the prisoner.  Now the Nation stands toward the Rebels in a like attitude.  It may be good policy to take them back as fast as