West.  As for the second proposition, it is well understood that under the Constitution Congress cannot interfere in any way in the question of slavery in the individual States.  Congress has no more constitutional power to abolish slavery in Maryland than she has to introduce it into Massachusetts.  No such pledge, therefore, was necessary on either side.  But such a pledge given by the North and West would have acted as an additional tie upon them, binding them to the finality of a constitutional enactment to which, as was of course well known, they strongly object.  There was no question of Congress interfering with slavery, with the purport of extending its area by special enactment, and therefore by such a pledge the North and West could gain nothing; but the South would in prestige have gained much.

But that third proposition as to the Fugitive Slave Law and the faithful execution of that law by the Northern and Western States would, if acceded to by Mr. Lincoln’s party, have amounted to an unconditional surrender of everything.  What!  Massachusetts and Connecticut carry out the Fugitive Slave Law?  Ohio carry out the Fugitive Slave Law after the “Dred Scott” decision and all its consequences?  Mr. Crittenden might as well have asked Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Ohio to introduce slavery within their own lands.  The Fugitive Slave Law was then, as it is now, the law of the land; it was the law of the United States as voted by Congress, and passed by the President, and acted on by the supreme judge of the United States Court.  But it was a law to which no free State had submitted itself, or would submit itself.  “What!” the English reader will say, “sundry States in the Union refuse to obey the laws of the Union—­refuse to submit to the constitutional action of their own Congress?” Yes.  Such has been the position of this country!  To such a dead lock has it been brought by the attempted but impossible amalgamation of North and South.  Mr. Crittenden’s compromise was moonshine.  It was utterly out of the question that the free States should bind themselves to the rendition of escaped slaves, or that Mr. Lincoln, who had just been brought in by their voices, should agree to any compromise which should attempt so to bind them.  Lord Palmerston might as well attempt to reenact the Corn Laws.

Then comes the question whether Mr. Lincoln or his government could have prevented the war after he had entered upon his office in March, 1861?  I do not suppose that any one thinks that he could have avoided secession and avoided the war also; that by any ordinary effort of government he could have secured the adhesion of the Gulf States to the Union after the first shot had been fired at Fort Sumter.  The general opinion in England is, I take it, this—­ that secession then was manifestly necessary, and that all the blood-shed and money-shed, and all this destruction of commerce and of agriculture might have been prevented