But the vagabond surplus,--the minority? Is it possible that with Union or disunion before us we can hesitate as to taking on this incumbrance? In a hard-working land vagabonds must die off,--'tis a hard case, but the emergency for the white men of this and a coming age is much harder. After all, there are only some fifteen hundred or two thousand lazy free negroes in New York city,--the climate, we are told, is too severe for them,--and this among well-nigh a million of inhabitants. We think it would be possible to find one single alderman in that city who has wasted as much capital, and injured the commonwealth quite as much, in one year, as all the negroes there put together, during the same time. It would be absurd to imagine that the emancipation of every negro in America to-morrow would add one million idlers and vagabonds to our population. _But what if it did?_ Would their destiny or injury to us be of such tremendous importance that we need for it peril our welfare as a nation? The standing armies of Germany absorb about one-fifth of the entire capital of the land. Better one million of negative negroes than a million of positive soldiers! There was never yet in history a time when such a glorious future offered itself to a nation as that which is now within our grasp. In its greatness and splendor it is beyond all description. The great problem of Republicanism--the question of human progress--has reached its last trial. If we keep this mighty nation one and inseparable, we shall have answered it forever; if not, why then those who revile man as vile and irreclaimably degraded may raise their pæans of triumph; the black spectres of antique tyrants may clap their hands gleefully in the land of accursed shadows, and hell hold high carnival, for, verily, it would seem as if they had triumphed, and that hope were a lie. But who are they who dare accuse us of wishing to weaken the administration and impede its course? Bring the question to light! If there be one thing more than another which those who demand emancipation desire, it is that the central government should be _strengthened_--aye, strengthened as it has never been before; so that, in future, there can be no return of secession. We have never been a republic--only an aggregate of smaller republics. If we _had_ been one, the first movement toward disunion would have hurled the traitors urging it to the dust. Aye, strengthen the government; and let its first manifestation of strength and will be the settling of the negro question. Give the administration as full power as you please--the more the better; it is only conferring strength on the people. There is no danger that the men of the North will ever lose a shadow of individual rights. They are too powerful.