“So that we are illustrating the question, whether such a government as ours is really practicable,—­whether a people can govern themselves.  Already we hear it said, ‘We have no government.’  The explanation is, We are not disposed to destroy each other’s lives to preserve the confederation.  We can have a monarchy, with its ‘divine right,’ and with its standing army, if we choose; or, if we remain as a republic, we must be liable to just our present exigency.  Our only defence, then, consists in mutual conciliation and agreement.

“What a land this is,” said I, “with its diversified interests and its unparalleled variety of products,—­its agriculture, mechanic arts, science, and literature.  Separation will embarrass every form of intercourse, and make us hostile.”

“Jews and Samaritans,” said Mrs. North.  “And all for an idea!”

“Yes,” said I, “and for an idea which to one whole section, and to a very large part of the people in the other section, is false.—­Four millions of negroes are destroying us.  As a foreign writer said, ’In trying to give liberty to the negro, we are losing our own.’”

Said Mrs. North, “Can nothing be done to save us?”

“Bishop Butler tells us, Mrs. North,” said I, “that a nation may be insane as well as an individual.  But reason seems to be returning in some quarters.  Secession and its consequences are having a wonderful effect to open the eyes of people.  John Brown’s foray and its end were a providential demonstration of certain errors, which we may conclude will not soon be revived.  Secession is now leading the world to look more narrowly into the subject of negro slavery.  Let me read to you these extracts from a recent number of ‘Le Pays,’ Paris.  The writer is arguing that Europe must recognize the Southern confederacy: 

’But in awaiting these results which would flow from the cordial welcome given by Europe to the new confederation, let true philanthropists be assured that they are wonderfully mistaken in regard to the real condition of the blacks of the South.  We willingly admit that their error is pardonable, for they have learned the relations of master and slave only from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”  Shall we look for that condition in the lucubrations of that romance, raised to the importance of a philosophic dissertation, but leading public opinion astray, provoking revolution, and necessitating incendiarism and revolution?  A romance is a work of fancy, which one cannot refute, and which cannot serve as a basis to any argument.  In our discussion, we must seek elsewhere for authorities and material.  Facts are eloquent, and statistics teach us that, under the superintendence of those masters,—­so cruel and so terrible, if we are to believe “Uncle Tom,”—­the black population of the South increases regularly in a greater proportion than the white; while in the Antilles, in Africa, and especially in the so very philanthropic States of the North, the black