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ON THE AMERICAN UNION.

THE above was simply and solely a Limited Liability Company. When the disruption took place it was composed of thirty-four states; each of which possessed all the powers of sovereignty that belong and appertain to free and independent states. The constitution made provision for equal rights and privileges, specified the object for which the Union was created, defined the duties of the president and administrators, and was made the bond or treaty which bound them together, whereof each was to be its own interpreter, reserving to itself the power to withdraw from the Union at pleasure on the encroachments of its rights, or the violation of its law of compact; and form such alliances as should seem to it desirable. And in the above concern the president and representatives of the different states were their servants; elected by them to execute their sovereign mandate or will; and held responsible for the trust reposed in them. The end contemplated in the formation of the Union was preservation from common danger. Its adoption was for economic purposes as well as prudential reasons. All the powers delegated to it were derived from the States. Its specific work was accurately and minutely described. The boundary line of its operations was fixed, labelled with the inscription, "hither shalt thou go, but no farther."

CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE OR LAW.

And to the sovereignty of the States it was indebted for the ground on which its halls of Congress and forts were built, as well as for its maintenance and existence.

CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE OR LAW.

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THE great connecting link which united the States together in the Union-the central or fundamental principle which constituted its groundwork the essential, vital element of its existence, so grandly and broadly developed in the Constitution, was equal rights to each state and to all men. This principle had been inaugurated into their councils in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, proclaimed to the world in the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards embodied in all the grand clauses of the Constitution. The entire fabric of our institutions was made to rest on the above basis at the commencement of our history as a people. Its development or growth was to create a mighty power in America that would make the "despots" of Europe, so called, tremble, and "defy the world," transfer not only the balance of power, but also of trade, from the old world to the new; when Mark Lane would cease to fix the prices of American farmers, and Wales and Staffordshire those of iron." And as the masters of the world and commerce we were then to repose on the lap of peace and harmony, surrounded with an elysium

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of comfort, a paradise of delight, the envy of the world. These bright visions and golden hopes, however, have not yet been realized. "America has not become "the land of which angels might dream," as John Bright has described it. It is very far from that at present, and likely to be for some time to come.

--WHY AND WHEREFORE.

We have noticed some causes in a preceding chapter as to the above which has produced such an overcast in our American sky, and caused the hurricane storms of God's wrath to sweep across our land and produce scenes of lamentation, mourning, and woe, in the contemplation of which the head turns sick, and the heart faint. When we come to examine our history as a people, we do not wonder that the hand-writing should appear on the walls against us, or that the voice of God should thunder in the ears of Southerns or Northerns, of each and all," ye are weighed in the balances, and found wanting."

ABANDONMENT OF THE CHARTERS OF FREEDOM.

THE Constitution and Declaration of Independence, to which the Fathers and Founders of our government had so solemnly pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honour to maintain, and which they had

constituted the palladium or citadel of human rights, were soon abandoned and treated as obsolete, or made the instruments of treachery, trickery, and fraud. What was meant for good has resulted in unmitigated evil. Throwing aside the parchments, the administrators of the government proclaimed themselves to be the law, or rather by a tremendous feat of jugglery used the instruments of justice to foster the theory of protection and the slave-holding interest, that they might oppress each other and multiply the victims of their cruelty instead of diminishing them. Speaking with the voice of a Jacob, they stretched out the hands of an Esau. Proclaiming their belief in the "preternatural philosophy" of the Union for the benefit of the world, like the Davenports, they slipped the constitutional ropes which were to bind them fast, that they might use them for purposes of fraud.

One of the breaches made in the fundamental law of the Union was created by the adoption of the theory of protection. Franklin was one of the first to plant the noxious weed. In a letter written from England in 1771, he wrote as follows:"Every manufacturer encouraged in our country makes part of a market for provisions within ourselves, and saves so much money to the country as must otherwise be exported to pay for the manufactures he supplies. Here in England it is well known and understood that wherever a manufactory is established which employs a number of hands, it

raises the value of lands in the neighbouring country all around it, partly by the greater demand near at hand for the produce of the land, and partly from the plenty of money drawn by the manufacturers to that part of the country. It seems, therefore, the interest of all our farmers and owners of lands, to encourage our young manufactures in preference to foreign ones imported among us from foreign countries."

Franklin's desideratum, therefore, was to bring the manufacturer and agriculturist side by side-to be the entire producers and consumers; a world within themselves, independent of the rest of mankind.

These views were adopted by Washington and Jefferson, and took deep root in all the Northern States. In a series of articles published in the New York Tribune, in 1854, on the "North and South," we find the following paragraph:-"The vast majority of the people north of Mason and Dixon's line have always believed with Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson, that protection tended to increase the value of labour and land, and to enrich both labourer and land-owner. Whether right or wrong in this, the votes of their representatives have on all occasions proved that the belief existed, and it does certainly exist to so great an extent, that were a vote now to be taken on the - question, whether the question should be maintained or abandoned, apart from all other issues,

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