caught among the hills, and are thus imprisoned for the amusement of the hotel guests.  “Them Southerners,” said my friend, “are jist as one as that ’ere bear.  We feeds him and gives him a house, and his belly is ollers full.  But then, jist becase he’s a black bear, we’re ollers a poking him with sticks, and a’ course the beast is a kinder riled.  He wants to be back to the mountains.  He wouldn’t have his belly filled, but he’d have his own way.  It’s jist so with them Southerners.”

It is of no use proving to any man or to any nation that they have got all they should want, if they have not got all that they do want.  If a servant desires to go, it is of no avail to show him that he has all he can desire in his present place.  The Northerners say that they have given no offense to the Southerners, and that therefore the South is wrong to raise a revolution.  The very fact that the North is the North, is an offence to the South.  As long as Mr. and Mrs. Jones were one in heart and one in feeling, having the same hopes and the same joys, it was well that they should remain together.  But when it is proved that they cannot so live without tearing out each other’s eyes, Sir Cresswell Cresswell, the revolutionary institution of domestic life, interferes and separates them.  This is the age of such separations.  I do not wonder that the North should use its logic to show that it has received cause of offense but given none; but I do think that such logic is thrown away.  The matter is not one for argument.  The South has thought that it can do better without the North than with it; and if it has the power to separate itself, it must be conceded that it has the right.

And then as to that question of honesty.  Whatever men do they certainly should do honestly.  Speaking broadly, one may say that the rule applies to nations as strongly as to individuals, and should be observed in politics as accurately as in other matters.  We must, however, confess that men who are scrupulous in their private dealings do too constantly drop those scruples when they handle public affairs, and especially when they handle them at stirring moments of great national changes.  The name of Napoleon III. stands fair now before Europe, and yet he filched the French empire with a falsehood.  The union of England and Ireland is a successful fact, but nevertheless it can hardly be said that it was honestly achieved.  I heartily believe that the whole of Texas is improved in every sense by having been taken from Mexico and added to the Southern States, but I much doubt whether that annexation was accomplished with absolute honesty.  We all reverence the name of Cavour, but Cavour did not consent to abandon Nice to France with clean hands.  When men have political ends to gain they regard their opponents as adversaries, and then that old rule of war is brought to bear, deceit or valor—­either may be used against a foe.  Would it were not so!  The rascally rule—­rascally in reference to all political contests—­is becoming less universal than it was.  But it still exists with sufficient force to be urged as an excuse; and while it does exist it seems almost needless to show that a certain amount of fraud has been used by a certain party in a revolution.  If the South be ultimately successful, the fraud of which it may have been guilty will be condoned by the world.