The South has sufficiently declared the cause of this trouble to be the irreconcilable conflict between their institutions and the fundamental principles of this government. While the cause remains in full strength, and after it has once burst forth in bloody and final collision, nothing will ever check that strife, whether in or out of the Union. The cause must be eradicated. Meanwhile, our own position, both before the world and in our own struggle at home, is a false one, so long as we blink the real issue. Many indications are hopeful. Gen. Butler's letter to the Secretary of War, and the Secretary's reply, look in the right direction. The Confiscation Act is pregnant with great consequences, and may yet be so used as to become an emancipation act in all the rebel States. It is high time it were so used. We have serious doubts whether the rebellion will ever be suppressed till that trenchant weapon is wielded. We reverently doubt whether the Lord means it shall be. The quiet passage of the Confiscation Act was an immense step of governmental progress. Perhaps it was all that the nation as a whole and the government were ready for. It may answer as a keen wedge. But we trust that, in December, Congress will make clean work by the full emancipation of all slaves in the rebel States, and by provision in some way for the speedy and certain extinction of slavery in the loyal States. To accomplish the latter event, we would ourselves willingly submit to any proper amount of pecuniary burden, provided it could be so arranged as not to recognize a right of property in man.--Chicago Congregational Herald. PROCLAMATION OF GEN. FREMONT. HEADQUARTERS, WESTERN DIVISION, St. Louis, Aug. 30, 1861. Circumstances; in my judgment, are of sufficient urgency to render it necessary that the Commanding General of this Department should assume administrative powers of the State. Its disorganized condition, helplessness of civil authority, and the total insecurity of life and devastation of property by bands of murderers and marauders, who infest nearly every county in the State, and avail themselves of public misfortunes and the vicinity of a hostile force to gratify private and neighborhood vengeance, and who find an enemy wherever they find plunder, finally demand the severest measures to repress the daily increasing crimes and outrages which are driving off the inhabitants and ruining the State. In this condition, the public safety and the success of our arms require unity of purpose, without let or hindrance, to the prompt administration of affairs. In order, therefore, to suppress disorder, maintain the public peace, and give security to the persons and property of loyal citizens, I do hereby extend and declare martial law throughout the State of Missouri.