they submit, it may be Christian magnanimity to make the way as easy as possible for their return, but they have no right to come back to anything but a prison and hard labor for life.  Many of them have trebly forfeited their lives,—­as traitors, as deserters from the naval and military service, and as paroled prisoners who have broken their parole.  And therefore we say, since we cannot deal with all the individuals, we must deal with the masses, and that in their corporate capacity.  If South Carolina is a sovereign State, is in the Union as a feudal chief in his king’s court, with power to carry from York to Lancaster and from Lancaster to York his subject vassals, then South Carolina has dared the hazard of rebellion, and her political head is forfeit.

It is next to be asked, what these conditions are to be.  And that is not to be answered in a breath.  That they can have but one result, emancipation, is a foregone conclusion; but the mode of reaching it is not so easily determined.  A cotton-loaded ship took fire at sea.  It would have been easy to pump in water enough to drown the fire.  But the captain said, “No,” for that would swell the bales to such an extent as to open every seam and start every timber.  So with, the ship now carrying King Cotton:  you may indeed quench the fire, but you may possibly turn the ship inside out into the bargain.

But something we have a right to insist on.  We have it, over and above the Constitutional right shown just now, upon the broad principle of necessity.  Slavery has proved itself a nuisance.  Just as we say to the owner of a bone-boiling establishment, “You poison the air; we cannot live here; you must go farther off,”—­and if a fever break out which can be clearly traced to that source, we say it emphatically:  so now Slavery having proved itself pestilential, we say, “March!”

We are not disposed, a la Staten Island, to burn down our yellow-feverish neighbor’s house.  We will give everybody time to pack up.  We will make up a little purse for any specially hard case which the removal may show.  But stay and be plague-stricken we will no longer; nor are we disposed to spend our whole income in burning sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal to keep out infection.  And certainly, when by neglect to pay ground-rent, or other illegality, the owner of our nuisance has forfeited his right to stay, no mortal can blame us for taking the strictest and most decisive steps known to the law to remove him.

AGNES OF SORRENTO.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE SAINT’S REST.