The greatest of corporations is a nation; the sublimest of all associations is that composed of nations, independent and equal, knit together in the bonds of peaceful fraternity as the great Christian Commonwealth. The Slavemongers may be a corporation _in fact_, but no such corporation can find place in that august Commonwealth. As well admit the Thugs, whose first article of faith is to kill the stranger,--or the Buccaneers, those “brothers of the coast,” who plundered on the sea; or, better still, revive the old Kingdom of the Assassins, where the king was an assassin, surrounded by counsellors and generals who were assassins, and all his subjects were assassins; or yet again, better at once and openly recognize Antichrist, the supreme and highest impersonation of the Slave Power. * * * * * Amidst the general degradation following such obeisance to Slavery, there are two Christian powers that would appear in sad and shameful eminence. I refer to Great Britain, declared protectress of the African race, and to France, declared champion of “ideas,” who, from the very abundance of pledges, are so situated that they cannot desert the good old cause and turn their faces against civilization without criminal tergiversation, which no mantle of diplomacy can cover. Where, then, is British devotion to the African race, so eloquently proclaimed by the British Minister? Where, then, is French devotion to ideas, so ostentatiously announced by the French Emperor? Remembered only to point a tale and show how nations have fallen. Great Britain knows less than France of national vicissitudes, but such an act of wrong would do something in its influence to equalize the conditions of these two nations. Rather than do this thing, better for the fast-anchored isle that it should sink beneath the sea, carrying down its cathedrals, its castles, its happy homes, its fields of glory, Runnymede, Westminster Hall, and the tomb of Shakespeare. In other days England has valiantly striven against Slavery, winning a truer glory than any achieved by her arms on land or sea; and now she is willing to surrender, at a moment when more can be done than ever before against the monster, wherever it shows its head,--for Slavery everywhere has its neck in this Rebellion. In other days France has valiantly striven for ideas; and now she, too, proposes surrender, although all that she professes at heart is involved in the doom of Slavery, which a word from her might hasten beyond recall. It is in England, where the great victory of Emancipation was first obtained, that now, more even than in France, the strongest sentiment for Rebel Slavemongers is manifest, constituting a _moral mania_ which menaces a pact and _concordat_ with the Rebellion itself,--as when an early Pope, head of the Christian Church, did not hesitate to execute a piratical convention with a Pagan enemy to the Christian name. It only remains that the new coalition