The Secessionists have suggested to us a fatal argument. "The superior race must control the inferior." Very well; if they insist on invoking the ordeal by battle to decide which is the superior, let it be so. It will be found that they have made the common mistake of confounding barbarism with strength. Because the Southern masses are as ignorant of letters and of arts as the Scottish Highlanders, they infer themselves to be as warlike. But even the brave and hardy Highlanders proved powerless against the imperfect military resources of England, a century ago, and it is not easy to see why those who now parody them should fare better. The absence of the alphabet does not necessarily prove the presence of strength, nor is the ignorance of all useful arts the best preparation for the elaborate warfare of modern times. The nation is grown well weary of this sham "chivalry," that would sell Bayard or Du Gueselin at auction, if it could be shown that the mother of either had a drop of marketable blood in her veins. It had always been charitably fancied that in South Carolina at least there was some remnant of more knightly honor, until a kind Providence sent Preston S. Brooks to dispel the illusion. It may be possible that even a brave man, in some moment of insane inconsistency, may commit some act which is the consummation of all cowardice; but it is utterly and absolutely impossible that any brave community should approve it. Time has long since carried the perpetrator of that dastardly outrage to a higher tribunal, but nothing can ever redeem the State of his birth from the crowning shame of its indorsement.