No article of commerce is so liable to waste and leakage as turpentine. The spirits can only be preserved in tin cans, or in thoroughly seasoned oak barrels, made tight by a coating of glue on the inner side. Though the material for these barrels exists at the South in luxuriant abundance, they are all procured from the North, and the closing of the Southern ports has now entirely cut off the supply; for while the turpentine farmer may improvise coopers, he can by no process give the oak timber the seasoning which is needed to render the barrel spirit-tight. Hence it is certain that a large portion of the last crop of turpentine must have gone to waste. When it is remembered that the one State of North Carolina exports annually nearly twenty millions in value of this product, and employs fully three-fourths of its negroes in its production, it will be seen how dearly the South is paying for the mad freak of secession. Putting out of view his actual loss of produce, how does the turpentine farmer feed and employ his negroes? and, pressed as these blacks inevitably are by both hunger and idleness, those prolific breeders of sedition, what will keep them quiet? 'What effect would secession have on your business?' I asked the Colonel, after a while. 'A favorable one. I should ship my crop direct to Liverpool and London, instead of selling it to New York middlemen.' 'But is not the larger portion of the turpentine crop consumed at the North?' 'Oh, yes. We should have to deal with the Yankees anyhow, but we should do as little with them as possible.' 'Suppose the Yankees object to your setting up by yourselves, and put your ports under lock and key?' 'They won't do that, and if they did England would break the blockade.' 'We might rap John Bull over the knuckles in that event,' I replied. 'Well, suppose you did, what then?' 'Merely, England would not have a ship in six months to carry your cotton. A war with her would ruin the shipping trade of the North. Our marine would seek employment at privateering, and soon sweep every British merchant ship from the ocean. We could afford to give up ten years' trade with you, and have to put down seccession by force, for the sake of a year's brush with John Bull.' 'But, my good friend, where would the British navy be all the while?' 'Asleep. The English haven't a steamer that can catch a Brookhaven schooner. The last war proved that vessels of war are no match for privateers.' 'Well, well! but the Yankees won't fight.' 'Suppose they do. Suppose they shut up your ports, and leave you with your cotton and turpentine unsold? You raise scarcely anything else--what would you eat?' 'We would turn our cotton-fields into corn and wheat. Turpentine-makers, of course, would suffer.' 'Then why are not _you_ a Union man?'