diplomatic agents abroard is clearly from the Free States, from their greater commercial interests, yet we have had the principal embassies, so as to secure the world’s markets for our cotton, tobacco, and sugar on the best possible terms.  We have had a vast majority of the higher offices of both army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North.  Equally so of clerks, auditors, and comptrollers filling the executive department, the records show for the last fifty years that of the three thousand thus employed, we have had more than two-thirds of the same, while we have but one-third of the white population of the republic.  Again, look at another item, and one, be assured, in which we have a great and vital interest; it is that of revenue, or means of supporting government.  From official documents we learn that a fraction over three-fourths of the revenue collected for the support of government has uniformly been raised from the North.  Pause now while you can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and candidly these important items.  Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars you must expend in a war with the North; with tens of thousands of your sons and brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices upon the altar of your ambition—­and for what? we ask again.  Is it for the overthrow of the American government, established by our common ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded on the broad principles of right, justice, and humanity?  And, as such, I must declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots in this and other lands, that it is the best and freest government—­the most equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men, that the sun of heaven ever shone upon.  Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this, under which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a century—­in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquility accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed—­is the height of madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I can neither lend my sanction nor my vote.

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THE CONFEDERATE AND THE SCOTTISH CLERGY ON SLAVERY.

Some three months ago, we published an “Address to Christians throughout the world,” by “the clergy of the Confederate States of America;” and yesterday we published a reply to that address, signed by nearly a thousand ministers of the various Churches in Scotland.  The Confederate address begins with a solemn declaration that its scope is not political but purely religious—­that