We have thus selected two points of history as the short answer to the cry, "You can never reconstruct the Union," which History, the impartial judge on the bench, pronounces to the wranglers at the bar below. "Never" is a long word to speak, if it be a short one to spell. Events move fast, and the logic of Fate is more convincing than the arguments of daily editors. The "tout arrive en France" is true of the world in general, so far as relates to isolated circumstances. The very fact that a threatened disruption of our Union has been possible ought to forbid any one from concluding that reconstruction, or rather restoration, is impossible. Twenty years after the Battle of Culloden, Jacobitism was a dream; fifty years after, it was a memory; a century after, it was an antiquarian study.
The real question we are to ask concerning the present rebellion, and the only one which is of importance, is, What is it based upon? an eternal or an arbitrary principle? An eternal principle renews itself till it succeeds,—if not in one century, then in another. An arbitrary principle makes its fierce fight and then is slain, and men bury it as soon as they can. The Stuarts represented an arbitrary principle. They were the impersonation of unconstitutional power. Hereditary right they had, and the Hanoverians had not. According to Mr. Thackeray, and according to the strictest fact, we suspect the Georges were no more personally estimable than the Jameses, and they were far less kingly-mannered. But they were willing to govern England according to law, and the Stuarts wore determined to govern according to prerogative.
What is the present issue? It is a contest, when reduced to its ultimate terms, between free labor and slavery. It is very true that this secession was planned before slavery considered itself aggrieved, before abolitionism became a word of war. But the antipathy between the slaveholder and the payer or receiver of wages was none the less radical. The systems were just as hostile. We admit that the South can make out its title of legitimacy. It has a slave population it must take care of and is bound to take care of till somebody can tell what better to do with it. It can show a refined condition of its highest society, which contrasts not unfavorably with the tawdry display and vulgar ostentation of the nouveaux riches whom sudden success in trade or invention has made conspicuous at the North. There is a fascination about the Southern life and character which charms those who do not look at it too closely into ardent championship. Even Mr. Russell, so long as he looked into white faces in South Carolina, was fascinated, and only when he came to look into black faces along the Mississippi found the disenchantment. The decisive difference is, that the North is purposing to settle and possess this land according to the law of right, and the South according to the law of might.
We say, therefore, that the issue of the contest need not be doubtful. The events of it may be very uncertain, but, from the parallel we have sketched, we think we can indicate the four chief causes of the Scottish failure as existing in the present crisis.
DISSENSIONS AMONG THE REBELS. These of course are hid from us by the veil of smoke that rises above Bull Run. But as between the party of advance and the party of defence, between the would-be spoilers of New York bank-vaults and Philadelphia mint-coffers, and the more prudent who desire "to be let alone," there is already an issue created. There are State jealousies, and that impatience of control which is inherent in the Southern mind, as it was in that of the Highland chieftains. There will be, as events move on, the same feud developed between the Palmetto of Carolina and the Pride-of-China of the Georgian, as then burned between Glen-Garry of that ilk and Vich Ian Vohr. There are rivalries of interest quite as fierce as those which roused the anti-tariff furor of Mr. Calhoun. Much as Great Britain may covet the cotton of South Carolina, she will not be disposed to encourage Louisiana to a competition in sugar with her own Jamaica. Virginia will hardly brook the opening of a rival Dahomey which shall cheapen into unprofitableness her rearing of slaves. While fighting is to be done, these questions are in abeyance; but so soon as men come to ask what they are fighting for, they revive. There is selfishness inherent in the very idea of secession.
There is a capital story, we think, in the "Gesta Romanorum," of three thieves who have robbed a man of a large sum of gold. They propose a carouse over their booty, and one is sent to the town to buy wine. While he is gone, the two left behind plot to murder him on his return, so as to have a half instead of a third to their shares. He, meanwhile, coveting the whole, buys poison to put into the wine. They cut his throat and sit down to drinking, which soon finishes them. It is an admirable illustration of the probable future of successful secession. Something very like this ruined the cause of James III., and something not unlike it may be even now damaging the cause of H.S.I.M.,—His Sea-Island Majesty, Cotton the First.
THE WANT OF EFFICIENT AID FROM ABROAD. We are not yet quite out of the woods, and it behooveth us not to halloo that we certainly have found the path. But it is more than probable that the Southern hope of English or French aid has failed. Either nation by itself might be won over but for the other. He is a bold and a good charioteer who can drive those two steeds in double harness.
Either without the other is simply an addition of x—x to the equation. If by next November we can get a single cotton-port open, we shall have settled that Uncle Tom and the Duchess of Sutherland may return to the social cabinet of Great Britain,—and that being so, the political cabinet is of small account.
With the want of foreign aid comes the next want, that of MONEY. The Emperor of Austria has a convenient currency in his dominions, which you can carry in sheets and clip off just what you need. But cross a frontier and the very beggars' dogs turn up their noses at the K.K. Schein-Münze. The Virginian and other Confederate scrip appears to be at par of exchange with Austrian bank-notes,—in fact, of the same worth as that "Brandon Money" of which Sol. Smith once brought away a hatful from Vicksburg, and was fain to swap it for a box of cigars. The South cannot long hold out under the wastefulness of war, unless relief come. "With bread and gunpowder one may go anywhere," said Napoleon,—but with limited hoecake and no gunpowder, even Governor Wise would wisely retreat.
But most certain of all in the long run is THE CONVICTION OF THE MEN OF THE SOUTH THEMSELVES OF THE VALUE OF THE UNION. It is said that the Union feeling is all gone at the South. That may be, and yet the facts on which it was based remain. Feeling is a thing which comes and goes. The value to the South of Federal care, Federal offices, Federal mail facilities, and the like, is not lessened. The weight of direct taxation is a marvellous corrector of the exciting effects of rhetoric. It is pleasanter to have Federal troops line State Street in Boston to guard the homeward passage of Onesimus to the longing Philemon than to have them receiving without a challenge the fugitive Contrabands. It is pleasanter to have B.F. Butler, Esq., argue in favor of the Dred Scott decision than to have General Butler enforcing the Fortress Monroe doctrine. Better to look up to a whole galaxy of stars, and to live under a baker's dozen of stripes, than to dwell in perpetual fear of choosing between the calaboose and the drill-room of the Louisiana Zouaves. We have noticed that the sympathizers of the North are quoting the sentence from Mr. Lincoln's inaugural to this effect,—What is to be gained after fighting? We have got to negotiate at last, be the war long or short. This is a very potent argument, as Mr. Lincoln meant it. To men who must sooner or later negotiate their way back into the Union, it is a very important consideration how much fighting and how much money they can afford before negotiating. To us who cannot at any cost afford to stop until they are thus ready to negotiate, it is only comparatively a question. He says to the South, as a lawyer sure of a judgment and confident of execution to be thereafter satisfied might say to his adversary's client,—"Don't litigate longer than you can help, for you are only making costs which must come out of your own pocket." To his own client, he says,—"They may delay, but they cannot hinder, our judgment."