This, of course, is Secession in a nutshell—the fundamental principle of the whole movement. But the leaders refused to take their own medicine, and tabled the proposition without discussion.
Mr. Bienvenu caused to be entered upon the journal his protest against the action of the Convention, denouncing it as an ordinance which "strips the people of their sovereignty, reduces them to a state of vassalage, and places the destinies of the State, and of the new Republic, at the mercy of an uncommissioned and irresponsible oligarchy."
The final vote was then taken, and resulted in one hundred and one yeas to seven nays; so "the Confederate Constitution" is declared ratified by the State of Louisiana.
March 25.
Despotic Theories of the Rebels.
The Revolutionists can not be charged with any lack of frankness. The Delta, lamenting that the Virginia Convention will not take that State out of the Union, predicts approvingly that "some Cromwellian influence will yet disperse the Convention, and place the Old Dominion in the Secession ranks." De Bow's Review, a leading Secession oracle, with high pretensions to philosophy and political economy, says, in its current issue:
"All government begins with usurpation, and is continued by force. Nature puts the ruling elements uppermost, and the masses below, and subject to those elements. Less than this is not a government. The right to govern resides with a very small minority, and the duty to obey is inherent with the great mass of mankind."
To-day's Crescent discusses the propriety of admitting northern States into the Southern Confederacy, "when they find out, as they soon will, that they can not get along by themselves." It is quite confident that they will, ere long, beg admission—but predicts for them the fate of the Peri, who
——"At the gate
Of Eden stood, disconsolate,
And wept to think her recreant race
Should e'er have lost that glorious place."