North America, vol 1 | Page 9

of a belligerent.
That this anger on the part of the North is unreasonable, I cannot doubt. That it is unfortunate, grievous, and very bitter, I am quite sure. But I do not think that it is in any degree surprising. I am inclined to think that, did I belong to Boston as I do belong to London, I should share in the feeling, and rave as loudly as all men there have raved against the coldness of England. When men have on hand such a job of work as the North has now undertaken, they are always guided by their feelings rather than their reason. What two men ever had a quarrel in which each did not think that all the world, if just, would espouse his own side of the dispute? The North feels that it has been more than loyal to the South, and that the South has taken advantage of that over- loyalty to betray the North. "We have worked for them, and fought for them, and paid for them," says the North. "By our labor we have raised their indolence to a par with our energy. While we have worked like men, we have allowed them to talk and bluster. We have warmed them in our bosom, and now they turn against us and sting us. The world sees that this is so. England, above all, must see it, and, seeing it, should speak out her true opinion." The North is hot with such thoughts as these; and one cannot wonder that she should be angry with her friend when her friend, with an expression of certain easy good wishes, bids her fight out her own battles. The North has been unreasonable with England; but I believe that every reader of this page would have been as unreasonable had that reader been born in Massachusetts.
Mr. and Mrs. Jones are the dearly-beloved friends of my family. My wife and I have lived with Mrs. Jones on terms of intimacy which have been quite endearing. Jones has had the run of my house with perfect freedom; and in Mrs. Jones's drawing-room I have always had my own arm-chair, and have been regaled with large breakfast-cups of tea, quite as though I were at home. But of a sudden Jones and his wife have fallen out, and there is for awhile in Jones Hall a cat-and-dog life that may end--in one hardly dare to surmise what calamity. Mrs. Jones begs that I will interfere with her husband, and Jones entreats the good offices of my wife in moderating the hot temper of his own. But we know better than that. If we interfere, the chances are that my dear friends will make it up and turn upon us. I grieve beyond measure in a general way at the temporary break up of the Jones-Hall happiness. I express general wishes that it may be temporary. But as for saying which is right or which is wrong--as to expressing special sympathy on either side in such a quarrel--it is out of the question. "My dear Jones, you must excuse me. Any news in the city to-day? Sugars have fallen; how are teas?" Of course Jones thinks that I'm a brute; but what can I do?
I have been somewhat surprised to find the trouble that has been taken by American orators, statesmen, and logicians to prove that this secession on the part of the South has been revolutionary-- that is to say, that it has been undertaken and carried on not in compliance with the Constitution of the United States, but in defiance of it. This has been done over and over again by some of the greatest men of the North, and has been done most successfully. But what then? Of course the movement has been revolutionary and anti-constitutional. Nobody, no single Southerner, can really believe that the Constitution of the United States as framed in 1787, or altered since, intended to give to the separate States the power of seceding as they pleased. It is surely useless going through long arguments to prove this, seeing that it is absolutely proved by the absence of any clause giving such license to the separate States. Such license would have been destructive to the very idea of a great nationality. Where would New England have been, as a part of the United States, if New York, which stretches from the Atlantic to the borders of Canada, had been endowed with the power of cutting off the six Northern States from the rest of the Union? No one will for a moment doubt that the movement was revolutionary, and yet infinite pains are taken to prove a fact that is patent to every one.
It is revolutionary; but what then? Have the Northern States of