Vainly does an American strive to realize such a state of society. Its effects are visible in the hatred of the poor toward the rich, which, if things continue as they are, will ultimately produce a war of classes. The work-houses and other alms-houses are always filled. There may be brief intervals when trade is brisk, and statesmen brag of the prosperity of the country, but these are only as the sane moments of a delirious patient. The general health of the community must not be judged from these. When in a year that it confesses is a favorable one, the leading political journal admits the proportion of paupers subsisting on alms to be one to fifteen, what must be the proportion in periods of great mercantile depression, which recur more frequently as time advances? I can not at all agree with Mr. Emerson, that England has not within her the elements of decay. She has. Her maritime supremacy is gone; her commercial advantages have vanished. In the world's market she possesses a stall, and nothing more. If it is better supplied than the stalls of some nations in the same market, it is, in its turn, inferior to those of others. I can not say, with her enemies, Let her decay. But I do bid her look to it in time, for her present condition is not one of promise.
A MILITARY NATION.
The Confederates are vastly our superiors in the art of spreading plausible reports. Acting together 'like one man,' a falsehood from head-quarters is at once disseminated from Richmond to New-Orleans, and the North is promptly victimized. At present their game is to make us discredit their own forces, having learned that our belief in the extent of their army is only a stimulus to Northern exertions. The truth is, that the Confederacy never had so large an army as at present, or in such excellent condition. They have been gathering up the odds and ends; they have learned day by day to make better soldiers of them; they have abundant food, are on the whole well armed, and it is rank folly in us to rely on their weakness. Only an overwhelming force—the entire force of the North—can now conquer them, and to make even this available, our Government must have recourse to the most determined and daring measures. It is no longer a question of suppressing rebellion, but of defense; of conquering or being conquered. Were we at this instant to consent to the independence of the Confederacy, it would not be accepted. The Southerner, easily depressed by defeat, becomes arrogant in the hour of victory, and would exact such conditions as we could never endure.
The South, by successful secession, would take with it all our prosperity and all our power. It would take the Border States and the control of the Mississippi, and worse than this, it would establish a war which would rage without intermission until we should be crushed, perhaps into literal tribute and vassalage. Every dispute arising from our entangled neighborhood—and these would be innumerable—would be determined with an insolence and a cruelty far surpassing any thing which we have heretofore experienced; and at every manifestation of unwillingness on our part to submit, we should have the sword tauntingly thrown in the balance. With foreign aid and foreign allies they could soon make our condition more galling than death. We should be the butt of every nation, humiliated and trampled on in every international dispute, and in every such difficulty the South would become the great power of America, and its rising sun would easily find means to abuse us still further.
Is this picture exaggerated? Let the reader shake off the fetters of old custom and see the literal truths of life and what it is capable of becoming. The South seriously proposes to establish itself as a permanently military nation. The blacks are to do all the labor, raise all the food, perform all the menial labor, and, in fact, literally support all the white men. The aristocracy are to govern and fill all higher civil and military functions; the 'mean whites' are to be incorporated in the army. Year by year they will, it is hoped, become more and more identified with their cause and their calling, and firmer in their hatred of the North. Long ago this programme was published, this scheme of a great negro-supported military nation, and it is not difficult to see that recent events have rendered the leaders of the Confederacy sanguine of its success. The whole South is full of crops raised by the slaves—and the Virginia press triumphantly proclaims the success of the first part of the great experiment, a success well worth to them far greater sacrifices than they have already undergone. The negro, it seems, as a slave, can support the Southern Confederacy—feed and clothe it. One year of war has proved this.
'One year ago we might have prevented this,' some furious 'radical' may urge. Let such men be silent. On every hand there are cries for their blood, and it is boldly commended in conservative journals and meetings that they be hanged. However, the question is not now, what might have been done a year ago. It is, what the enemy hope for and what they are yet capable of doing.
By proving, undisturbed, the fact that the slaves can support them, the Confederates have gained a greater victory than the North dreams of. By forming a permanently military nation, they go a step further, and relieve their communities from the weight of a non-productive, idle, dangerous class of poor whites. When every 'bush-whacker,' 'sand-hiller,' 'Arab,' and other hanger-on shall have become a soldier, with his settled place in society, a few new troubles may be incurred, but much greater ones can not fail to be avoided. The leaders in a military government may preserve that unity which could never be hoped for under other conditions. We already know what unanimity prevails among them; we may imagine what this would become when further experience shall have still more coordinated and consolidated them.
It is not proposed in the South that other than military manufactures shall be encouraged. European goods are to flow in untaxed, and the 'military nation' proposes to do all in its power to smuggle them over the Northern frontier. To effect this darling scheme of vast profits to themselves and of ruin to us, any sacrifice will be made. It is urged that direct taxation will not prove sufficiently profitable to enable the South to dispense with a revenue tariff; but those who urge this, do not know the South. They do not know the infinite depths of hatred to the North and to everything Northern—the venom and vindictiveness with which they would pursue us. They forget that as a military nation whatever the rulers will, must and shall be done. The great planters—and Southern policy of capital tends to develop none save great planters and their adherents—will undoubtedly be taxed, but then they will on the other hand be directly interested in sustaining the government, and share in its power and patronage. Let the reader remember that after all, there are only at present in the South some two hundred thousand slaveholders, or men holding slaves sufficient to fairly rank among those whose interests are seriously allied to 'the institution.' Possibly the chances of war have still further diminished this number; it would be strange indeed, if between runaways and the sacrifices which adversity brings, and which fall most heavily on men of moderate means, the number of slaveholders has not been reduced. In such times negroes are sold at any price. This small number of slaveholders will understand their own political interests sufficiently well to admit foreign goods duty free, and to use every effort to smuggle them into the North.
We, on the other hand, who have no negroes to plant for us, who must pay our farmers far more than the wretched black earns, have no 'mud-sill' whereon to rest. We are manufacturers, and can not form a permanent military nation. We hold in horror the idea of a standing army, and of having our young men who might grow up wealthy and learned—and what Northern youth is there who has not his 'chances'?—become garrison-soldiers for life. We love learning, culture, independence, progress. Year by year sees noble schools rising among us—schools in which every man's son may obtain an excellent free education, and qualify himself for any position in any society. Year by year sees our manufacturers demanding fresh labor, more talent, more youth, more energy, and with them sees the condition of the mechanic becoming more and more ameliorated. Year by year finds the public lecture and library more used by the workman, and the masses rising little by little above their post. In short, we belong to a community whose conditions are those of refinement and of peace; ours is an advanced stage of civilization, and it is our duty to maintain this advance.