If slavery be right, then the South is right. No impartial foreigner could fail to draw this conclusion under the circumstances of this war. But _is_ it right; we do not say as a thing of the past, and of a rapidly vanishing serf-system, but as an institution of the progressive present? Witness the words of G. BATELLE, a member of the Western Virginia Constitutional Convention,--as we write, in session at Wheeling,--and who has published an address to that body on the question of Emancipation, from which we extract the following:-- The injuries which slavery inflicts upon our own people are manifold and obvious. It practically aims to enslave not merely another race, but our own race. It inserts in its bill of rights some very high-sounding phrases securing freedom of speech; and then practically and in detail puts a lock on every man's mouth, and a seal on every man's lips, who will not shout for and swear by the divinity of the system. It amuses the popular fancy with a few glittering generalities in the fundamental law about the liberty of the press, and forthwith usurps authority, even in times of peace, to send out its edict to every postmaster, whether in the village or at the cross-roads, clothing him with a despotic and absolute censorship over one of the dearest rights of the citizen. It degrades labor by giving it the badge of servility, and it impedes enterprise by withholding its proper rewards. It alone has claimed exemption from the rule of uniform taxation, and then demanded and received the largest share of the proceeds of that taxation. Is it any wonder, in such a state of facts, that there are this day, of those who have been driven from Virginia mainly by this system, men enough, with their descendents, and means and energy, scattered through the West, of themselves to make no mean State?... It has been as a fellow-observer, and I will add as a fellow-sufferer, with the members of the Convention, that my judgment of the system of slavery among us has been formed. We have seen it seeking to inaugurate, in many instances all too successfully, a reign of terror in times of profound peace, of which Austria might be ashamed. We have seen it year by year driving out from our genial climate, and fruitful soil, and exhaustless natural resources, some of the men of the very best energy, talent and skill among our population. We have seen also, in times of peace, the liberty of speech taken away, the freedom of the press abolished, and the willing minions of this system, in hunting down their victims, spare from degradation and insult neither the young, nor the gray-haired veteran of seventy winters, whose every thought was as free from offense against society as is that of the infant of days.