end justified the means. Violated faith excused violated law; and when the message of the President, excusing the acts of Commodore Paulding at Punta Arenas, in December, 1857, was sent to the Senate, Mr. Seward might well say, in a double sense, that his excellency had become a convert to the "higher law" doctrine.

And how did the leaders of the South act in the emergency? It was just at the time the news of the Paulding act at Punta Arenas reached Washington that the adoption of the Lecompton constitution was ascertained. Then the President besought the men who were driving him on the Kansas question not to press him on the Central American policy; and the Southern leaders, giving up the substance, fled in pursuit of the shadow. The Lecompton constitution would not give another foot of soil to slavery, and the movement in Nicaragua might give it an empire. Yet the latter was sacrificed to the former, and the insults of Paulding and the President have gone unrebuked by the South up to the present time.

Is it not time for the South to cease the contest for abstractions, and to fight for realities? Of what avail is it to discuss the right to carry slavery into the territories of the Union if there are none to go thither? These are questions for schoolmen-fit to sharpen the logical faculty and to make the mind quick and keen in the perception of analogies and distinctions; but surely they are not such questions as touch practical life, and come home to men's interests and actions. The feelings and conscience of the people are not to be called forth by the subtleties of lawyers, or the differences of metaphysicians;nor can their energies be roused into action for the defence of rights none of them care to exercise. The minds of full-grown men cannot be fed on mere discussions of territorial rights; they require some substantial policy which all can understand and appreciate.

Nor is it wise for the weaker party to waste its strength in fighting for shadows. It is only the stronger party which can afford to throw away its force on indecisive skirmishes. At present the South must husband her political power, else she will soon lose all she possesses. The same influence she brought to bear in favor of the position she took in Kansas would have secured the establishment of the Americans in Nicaragua. And unless she assumes now an entirely defensive attitude, what else is left for the South except to carry out the policy proposed to her three years ago in Central America? How else can she strengthen slavery than by seeking its extension beyond the limits of the Union? The Repub

lican party aims at destroying slavery by sap, and not by assault. It declares now that the task of confining slavery is complete, and the work of the miner has already commenced. Whither can the slave-holder fly when the enemy has completed his chambers, and filled in the powder, and prepared the train, and stands with lighted match ready to apply the fire?

Time presses. If the South wishes to get her institutions into tropical America she must do so before treaties are made to embarrass her action and hamper her energies. Already there is a treaty between Mexico and Great Britain by which the former agrees to do all in her power for the suppression of the slave-trade; and, in 1856, a clause was inserted into the Dallas-Clarendon Convention stipulating for the perpetual exclusion of slavery from the Bay Islands of Honduras. This clause was suggested (as the writer was informed by the person himself who proposed it) by an American, for the purpose of securing the support of England to a projected railway across Honduras; and thus the rights of American civilization were to be bartered away for the paltry profits of a railway company. And while Nicaragua was to be hemmed in by an anti-slavery treaty between England and Honduras on the north, Costa Rica made an agreement with New-Granada that slavery should never be introduced within her limits. The enemies of American civilization-for such are the enemies of slavery seem to be more on the alert than its friends.

The faith Walker had in the intelligence of the Southern States to perceive their true policy and in their resolution to carry it out, was one of the causes which led to the publication of the decree of the 22d of September, at the time it was given forth. Nor is his faith in the South shaken; though who can fail to be amazed at the facility with which the South is carried off after chimeras? Sooner or later, however, the slaveholding States are bound to come as one man to the support of the Nicaraguan policy. The decree of the 22d September, not the result of hasty passion or immature thought, fixed the fate of Nicaragua, and bound the republic to the car of American civilization.

For more than two years the enemies of slavery have been contriving and plotting to exclude the naturalized Nicaraguans from their adopted country. But as yet not a single additional barrier has been interposed; and the South has but to resolve upon the task of carrying slavery into Nicaragua in order that. the work may be accomplished.

If other appeals than those of interest are required for stimulating the Southern States in the effort to re-establish

slavery in Central America, they are not lacking. The hearts of Southern youth answer to the call of honor, and strong arms and steady eyes are waiting to carry forward the policy which is now the dictate of duty as well as of interest. The issue between slavery and anti-slavery has been made in Nicaragua: and it is impossible for slavery to retire from the contest without losing some of its courage and its character. Nor is the issue one of mere words. It is not a tilt of sport, a joust of reeds, but the knights have touched the shields of their adversaries with the points of their lances, and the tourney is one of mortal strife, and may Fortune most favor them who best do their duty in the fray.

Something is due from the South to the memory of the brave dead who repose in the soil of Nicaragua. In defence of slavery these men left their homes, met with calmness and constancy the perils of a tropical climate, and finally yielded up their lives for the interests of the South. I have seen these men die in many ways. I have seen them gasping life away under the effects of typhus; I have seen them convulsed in the death agony from the fearful blows of cholera; I have seen them sink to glorious rest from mortal wounds received on honorable fields; but I never saw the first man who repented engaging in the cause for which he yielded his life. These martyrs and confessors in the cause of Southern civilization surely deserve recognition at its hands. And what can be done for their memories while the cause for which they suffered and died remains in peril and jeopardy!

If there, then, be yet vigor in the South (and who can doubt that there is?) for further contest with the soldiers of antislavery, let her cast off the lethargy which inthrals her, and prepare anew for the conflict. But at the same time she throws aside her languor and indifference, let her, taught by the past, discard the delusions and abstractions with which politicians have agitated her passions without advancing her interests. It is time for slavery to spend its efforts on realities, and not beat the air with wanton and ill-advised blows. true field for the exertions of slavery is in tropical America; there it finds the natural seat of its empire, and thither it can spread, if it will make the effort, regardless of conflict with adverse interests. The way is open, and it only requires courage and will to enter the path and reach the goal. Will the South be true to herself in this emergency?

The

ART. V.-SOUTHERN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION OF VIRGINIA.

MEMORIAL OF THE CENTRAL SOUTHERN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION OF VIRGINIA BEING A STATEMENT OF GRIEVANCES AND SUGGESTION OF REMEDIES THEREFOR.

YOUR memorialists, the Central Southern Rights Association of Virginia, respectfully represent, that the hostile relations for many years and at the present time existing on the part of certain non-slaveholding States of the North toward Virginia and her sister Southern States, require the earnest and solemn consideration of your honorable body, and the adoption by the South of a well-concerted system of prompt and effectual measures of self-defence.

Bound together as are the United States by a common bond of federal and fraternal union-a confederation and fraternity of coequal sovereignties, with equal rights and equal guarantees for their protection-the non-slaveholding States, while exercising those rights and guarantees for themselves even beyond the just limits and true intent of the compact, have practically denied them to the Southern States; and, while enjoying to the full all the advantages of the Union, and grown great and rich through our resources, they have used that Union as a bulwark from behind which to plot schemes and perpetrate outrages against our peace, our property, and our lives.

At the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, African slavery existed in and was protected by the laws of every State in the Union except Massachusetts, and in Massachusetts it had been only recently abolished.

The Constitution was ordained, not to create or destroy, but to preserve and perpetuate the sovereign powers of the several States in respect to their own institutions and governments, and to spread the shield of a common nationality over the rights of each and all. The controlling cause of its origin and adoption, was the felt necessity of so regulating intercourse with each other, and with foreign nations, that the sovereignty of each night be preserved, in harmony with the supremacy and protection of the whole. In respect to the great subject of slavery and all its political relations, it is well known that the Constitution was a compromise, based upon mutual concessions--not, indeed, in regard to the existence of the institution in the several States-for of that each State was left free to act for itself-but in regard to the power it was to wield, and the burdens it was to bear under the federal government, and the protection that government was to insure to its rights and preservation in the Union. Chief among the rights reserved to the several States, was the right of governing itself in respect to that institution, as of all other domestic concerns, and chief among the express guarantees of the Constitution was the clause providing for the rendition of fugitive slaves by the several States. And in accordance with these truths, the Northern States, one by one, as the exigencies of their condition and the natural influ

ences of climate and soil seemed to dictate, have gotten rid of their slaves by sale or emancipation (certainly as soon as they ceased to be profitable), while the Southern States, in obedience to the same natural laws, the necessities of their social and political position, and the great wants of the world-including the Northern States-have preserved the institution as it stood in the times of their forefathers, and must stand so long as the industrial interests of mankind and the advancement of civilization depend upon the products of compulsory African labor in the fertile fields of the South. But, notwithstanding the most solemn and sacred obligations, several, if not all of the five Northwestern States, sprung from that rich empire, the munificent dowry of Virginia to the Union, have passed laws in plain contravention of her constitutional rights, while all of the Northern States proper, in open violation of clear compact and plighted faith, almost in solid phalanx, have either expressly nullified the laws of Congress, enacted under the Constitution for the rendition of fugitive slaves, or have environed its execution with penalties, annoyances, and difficulties, which practically deprive it of force.

Under this system of unfriendly and fraudulent legislation the Northern people have pillaged our property and clothed the crime with the sanctity of the law. Adding insult to theft and confiscation, they have slandered the owners of the property they have stolen or destroyed, and by epithet and invective, by ridicule and vituperation, by caricature and falsehood, and all the artillery of calumny and abuse, they have sought to traduce and degrade us in the eyes of the world. Perverting the pure spirit of Christianity from its benign mission of Peace on earth and good will among men, they have sown discord and strife throughout the land-they have severed the bonds of Religion that bound us together--they have preached against us hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness, even sedition and slaughter, rapine and anarchy, and have desecrated the altars of God with profane prayers for curses upon our heads. Proceeding now to extremes of rage and desperation, they have formed combinations to invade our soil, and incite internecine and servile war, and midnight treason, murder, and robbery, have marked their footsteps in crime. And while, until a late hour, the conservative few have kept doubtful silence instead of giving honest outburst to fearless indignation-by public and by private demonstrations, large masses of the Northern people have promptly sympathized with and sanctioned, have applauded and commemorated, those fiendish acts as patriotic and heroic achievements.

Vain, indeed, is it to say that the more intelligent and respectable citizens of the North disapprove and deplore this state of things. We do honor to the earnest statesmen who have denounced, with manly eloquence, the actors in the bloody drama of Harper's Ferry, their aiders and abettors; and commendation is due to all who echoed that denunciation and the noble sentiments proclaimed of fealty to the Constitution and Union as framed by our fathers. But either such men as these are in hopeless minority, or in the exercise of criminal neglect of the elective franchise, by giving countenance and control to