terminate sooner or later in the way in which it did. The same may be said of their present attempt to combine under the same political system with their European possessions, the northern part of this continent,--the vast peninsula of Hindostan with its hundred million inhabitants,--the southern termination of Africa, and half the islands on the face of the globe,--including the Australian Continent, with its dependencies, which, of themselves, may be said to constitute another _new world_. All these scattered limbs,--_membra disjecta_,--of the mighty Queen of the Ocean,--are destined to fall off successively from the parent body, and form themselves into independent States. With the members of this Union, the case is different. Descended from the same original stock; united by community of language, literature, manners, laws, religion and government; enclosed, notwithstanding the vast extent of their territory, by a border of unbroken geographical continuity;--brought up from their first plantation, through the long period of colonial infancy, to their present flourishing and glorious maturity, as sisters of one family;--bound together by the million various indissoluble ties of personal relationship, that have been created by a constant intercourse of more than two centuries,--the States composing this Union not only are, according to the form of the Constitution, but they are in fact and in feeling _one people_. They were united, before they framed the Constitution, by the high and paramount decree of the great Lawgiver of the universe: and whom God hath joined, man _cannot_ put asunder. It is not enough to say, that the Union ought not to be dissolved,--that the States have no right to dissolve it,--that it is better that it should not be dissolved:--the truth is, that it _cannot_ permanently be dissolved. Its members cannot exist for any length of time in a state of separation from each other. The present form of Union may,--should Providence intend to visit us with his severest judgments,--be temporarily broken up. What would be the consequence? The very act of its destruction would in all probability be attended by a development of military power and a series of military movements, which would end in the recombination of the States into another Union, under a military Government. Should we even suppose,--what is next to impossible,--a peaceful temporary separation, what would still be the consequence? The continual relations between twenty-four neighboring States of kindred origin and civilization, would necessarily lead to collisions, which would grow into wars, and these would continue until conquest had again consolidated the whole country into a new Union, not as at present, under the quiet reign of constitutional liberty, but under the sway, in some of its various forms, of a lawless and sanguinary despotism.