Before parting with our "Masters in the Art of War," we must abate a little of the honors we have lavished on them. We have said that they discovered and proclaimed the failure of Free Society before we did. So they did; but they mistook it for the failure of all society. Their little world of Western Europe and Yankeedom was, in their eyes, the whole world. Hence, exclaims Mr. Carlyle, "We must have a new world, if we are to have any world at all." And Andrews takes up the cry, all the North joins in chorus, and sends the sad knell echoing back to Europe. Not so fast, gentlemen. Your world is not one-tenth of the whole world, and all is peace, quiet, and prosperity outside of it. We of the South, and all slave countries, want no new world. Now we were the first to discover and proclaim that Free Society _alone_ had failed; and failed because it was free. We occupied vantage ground, a good stand-point, saw both forms of society, and thus discovered what our masters had overlooked. Every body sees it now, and gives us no more credit for the discovery, than his cotemporaries gave Columbus--"At mihi plaudo!" ITALIAM! primus conclamat Achates; Italiam, coeto socii clamore salutant. CHAPTER XI. DECAY OF ENGLISH LIBERTY, AND GROWTH OF ENGLISH POOR LAWS. Blackstone, whose Commentaries have been, for half a century, a common school-book, and whose opinions on the rise, growth and full development of British liberty, are generally received as true, as well in America as in Europe, maintains a theory the very opposite of that for which we are about to contend.