The inherent weakness of a league, even when its general object is such as to influence the passions of the nations which compose it, is well known to all European statesmen. The various alliances against France show the insuperable difficulties in the way of giving to confederacies of sovereign states a unity and efficiency corresponding to their aggregate strength, and the necessity which the leaders of such alliances are always under of expending half their skill and energy in preventing the loosely compacted league from falling to pieces. The alliance under the lead of William III. barely sustained itself against Louis XIV., though William was the ablest statesman in Europe, and had been trained in the tactics of confederacies from his cradle. The alliance under the lead of Marlborough owed its measure of success to his infinite address and miraculous patience as much as to his consummate military genius; and the ignominious "secession" of England, in the treaty of Utrecht, ended in making it one of the most conspicuous examples of the weakness of such combinations. When the exceptional military genius, as in the case of Frederick and Napoleon, has been on the side of the single power assailed, the results have been all the more remarkable. The coalition against Frederick, the ruler of five millions of people, was composed of sovereigns who ruled a hundred millions; and at the end of seven years of war they had not succeeded in wringing permanently from his grasp a square mile of territory. The first coalitions against Napoleon resulted only in making him the master of Europe; and he was crushed at last merely by the dead weight of the nations which the senselessness of his political passions brought down upon his empire. Indeed, the trouble with all leagues is, that they are commanded, more or less, by debating-societies; and a debating-society is weak before a man. The Southern Confederacy is a confederacy only in name; for no despotism in Europe or Asia has more relentless unity of purpose, and in none does debate exercise less control over executive affairs. All the powers of the government are practically absorbed in Jefferson Davis, and a rebellion in the name of State Rights has ended in a military autocracy, in which all rights, personal and State, are suspended.