education in the methods of self-support would have been the assurance of unlimited future advancement. In brief, in all the elements of the greatness of a community, the south might now have equalled, if not excelled, the north. But there are some other effects of slavery to be noted before the outline of the Old south can be clearly and fully drawn. Among the planters, costly and liberal instruction was given to a few of those who were to adorn places of leisured ease, or to fill the necessary professions and public positions; but, in the midst of the sparse and shifting rural population, there could not be that devotion to the education of all, which is one of the most conspicuous glories of the northern States. In consequence of the sparseness of the planters and their roving habits, there was not that subdivision of different portions of the counties into small self-governing wards, which Jefferson so fondly desired. He said of the New England townships, that they had "proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation." He also said that he considered the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on two hooks, to wit, "the public education, and the subdivision into wards." This government of every vicinage in its home affairs by itself, as originated in New England, and is now spread far and wide throughout the northern States, is the most beneficent achievement of American democracy. By this coercion of the citizen to participate in the constant administration of public matters directly concerning his interests, self-government becomes, as it should be, the business of everybody, and everybody is compulsorily educated in the best of all learning for the race. The finale of slavery remains to be told. As opposition to it increased from without, the south became more and more closely united. She honestly believed that wanton intermeddlers were attacking her dearest rights. The steady and continually strengthening warfare against slavery, and her continuous and earnest defence of it, began--it is impossible to determine precisely when--to knit her into a nationality of her own. He who understands what Mr. Bagehot calls "nation-making" will discover, in the past history of the south, if he looks attentively, many signs of this tendency, which steadily progressed unperceived on her part, and still more so on the part of the north, until the south began to coalesce into a nation as compact as her scattered and random elements would permit. The long advocacy and support of slavery in the political arena had fevered her whole people, and finally, under these promptings to a national life, politics absorbed nearly all of her intellectual powers.