may dictate severer measures.  Emancipation is the policy of the Government, and will soon be the determination of the people.  Whether it shall be gradual or immediate depends altogether on the slaveholders themselves.  The prolongation of the war for a year, and the operation of the internal tax bill, will convert all the voters of the Free States, whether Republicans or Democrats, into practical Emancipationists.  The tax bill alone will teach the people important lessons which no politicians can gainsay.  Every person who buys a piece of broadcloth or calico,—­every person who takes a cup of tea or coffee,—­every person who lives from day to day on the energy he thinks he derives from patent medicines, or beer, or whiskey,—­every person who signs a note, or draws a bill of exchange, or sends a telegraphic despatch, or advertises in a newspaper, or makes a will, or “raises” anything, or manufactures anything, will naturally inquire why he or she is compelled to submit to an irritating as well as an onerous tax.  The only answer that can possibly be returned is this,—­ that all these vexatious burdens are necessary because a comparatively few persons out of an immense population have chosen to get up a civil war in order to protect and foster their slave-property, and the political power it confers.  As this property is but a small fraction of the whole property of the country, and as its owners are not a hundredth part of the population of the country, does any sane man doubt that the slave-property will be relentlessly confiscated in order that the Slave Power may be forever crushed?

There are, we know, persons in the Free States who pretend to believe that the war will leave Slavery where the war found it,—­that our half a million of soldiers have gone South on a sort of military picnic, and will return in a cordial mood towards their Southern brethren in arms,—­and that there is no real depth and earnestness of purpose in the Free States.  Though one year has done the ordinary work of a century in effecting or confirming changes in the ideas and sentiments of the people, these persons still sagely rely on the party-phrases current some eighteen months ago to reconstruct the Union on the old basis of the domination of the Slave Power, through the combination of a divided North with a united South.  By the theory of these persons, there is something peculiarly sacred in property in men, distinguishing it from the more vulgar form of property in things; and though the cost of putting down the Rebellion will nearly equal the value of the Southern slaves, considered as chattels, they suppose that the owners of property in things will cheerfully submit to be taxed for a thousand millions,—­a fourth of the almost fabulous debt of England,—­without any irritation against the chivalric owners of property in men, whose pride, caprice, and insubordination have made the taxation necessary.  Such may possibly be the fact, but as sane men we cannot but disbelieve it.  Our conviction is, that, whether the war is ended in three months or in twelve months, the Slave Power is sure to be undermined or overthrown.