So eager is one to grasp at the benefits which some such Confederation promises to confer, that the perils to the prerogative of the Crown, and to the body so formed, are apt to lie hid from view. But they must be well guarded against; and I for one am persuaded that it would be far better for us to see the Provinces of British America independent than to behold them incorporated with the Northern Republic. The greatest of all these internal perils is in the maintenance of the Local Parliaments, which may come into collision with the Federal Government on local questions impossible to foresee, or define, or adjust; but as the delegates considered the plan of a complete Legislative Union quite incompatible with the reserved rights of a portion of the Confederation, the only way left to escape the mischiefs which threaten the future life of the new body is to bind those Local Parliaments within the most narrow limits, consistent with local utility and existence. It is not for the sake of our future connection, but for their own integrity and happiness that such a course is recommended. They have “an awful example” at their doors. The torrents of blood which have deluged the soil of the North American Republics all welled out of the little chink in the corner-stone of the Constitution, on one side of which lay States’ Rights, and on the other Federal Authority. Without some justification in law and in argument, such men as Calhoun, and Stephens, and Davis, would never have reasoned, and planned, and fought, and worked a whole people up to make war against the Union. Sad as the spectacle is of a community of freemen waging war against the principles of self-government, it must be admitted that their instinct may be sounder than their reasoning, and that they are engaged in a struggle for self-preservation, in which they have swelled their proportions into that of a gigantic despotism, but have after all attained a giant’s port and strength. It is impossible to say whether the corruption which Montesquieu has declared to be the destruction of a democracy, has yet seized upon the tremendous impersonation of brute force, of unconquerable will, of passion, of lust of empire, which now rules in the Capitol, and occupies the throne whereon feebly sat heretofore the mild impuissance of the old Federal Executive; but if the pictures which have been presented to us be true, there is a prophetic meaning in the words of the philosophic Frenchman:--“Les politiques grecs, qui vivaient dans le gouvernement populaire, ne reconnaissaient d’autre force qui pût le soutenir que celle de la vertu. Ceux d’aujourd’hui ne nous parlent que des manufactures, de commerce, de finances, de richesse, et de luxe même.” The giant’s feet may be of clay, and his body may be of that artificial stiffening which gives to worthless stuffs a temporary substantiality, but behind the giant stand the great American people, with hands dyed in their brothers’ gore, and who,