indeed awake to a tardy perception of these important views; but the eyes of the Northern people were then obstinately closed against them by a foregone conclusion. We have cited these recent and striking illustrations of the fundamental importance of the ethical discussion, to justify the task we have undertaken. Some may suppose that, as the United States are no more as they were, and slaveholding is absolutely and finally ended, the question is obsolete. This is a great mistake. The status of the negro is just beginning to develop itself as an agitating and potent element in the politics of America. It will still continue the great ground of contrast, and subject of moral strife, between the North and the South. We have attempted to indicate the potency of the slow and silent but irresistible influence of opinion over human affairs. Let our enemies claim the triumph without question in the field of opinion; let them continue to persuade mankind successfully that we were a people stained by a standing social crime; and we shall be continually worsted by them. In order to be free, we must be respected: and to this end we must defend our good name. We need not urge that instinctive desire for the good opinion of our fellow-men, and that sense of justice, which must ever render it painful to be the objects of undeserved odium. Instead, therefore, of regarding the discussion of the rightfulness of African slavery as henceforth antiquated, we believe that it assumes, at this era, a new and wider importance. While the swords of our people were fighting the battles of a necessary self-defence, the pens of our statesmen should have been no less diligent in defending us against the adverse opinion of a prejudiced world. Every opening should have been seized to disabuse the minds of Europeans, a jury to which we have hitherto had no access, although condemned by it. The discussion should everywhere have been urged, until public opinion was effectually rectified and made just to the Confederate States.