There is nothing which the Southern press, and, so far as we can learn, the Southern people, have so consistently and thoroughly disavowed since the war began, as the assertion that a restoration of the Union may be effected on the basis of undisturbed slavery. They have ridiculed the Democrats of the North with as great contempt and as bitter sarcasm as were ever awarded of old to Abolitionists, for continually urging this worn-out folly; for now that the mask is finally thrown off, they make no secret of their scorn for their old tools and dupes. Slavery is no longer the primary object; they are quite willing to give up slavery if the growing prosperity of the South should require it; their emissaries abroad in every _salon_ have been vowing that manumission of their slaves would soon follow recognition; and it was their rage at failure after such wretched abasement and unprincipled inconsistency which, very naturally, provoked the present ire of the South against England and France. They, the proud, chivalrous Southrons, who had daringly rushed to battle as slave lords, after eating abundant dirt as prospective Abolitionists, after promising any thing and every thing for a recognition, received the cold shoulder. No wonder that ill-will to England is openly avowed by the Richmond press as one of the reasons for burning the cotton as the Northern armies advance. The only basis of peace with the North, as the South declares, is Disunion; and they do most certainly mean it. No giving up the slave question, no enforcing of fugitive slave laws; no, not the hanging of Messrs. Garrison and Phillips, or any other punishment of all Emancipationists--as clamored for by thousands of trembling cowards--would be of any avail. It is disunion or nothing--and disunion they can not have. There shall be no disunion, no settlement of any thing on _any_ basis but the Union. Richmond papers, after the battle of Pittsburgh Landing, proposed peace and separation. They do not know us. The North was never so determined to push on as now; never so eager for battle or for sacrifices. If the South is in earnest, so are we; if they have deaths to avenge, so have we; if they cry for war to the knife, so surely as God lives they can have it in full measure. For thirty years the blazing straw of Southern insult has been heaped on the Northern steel; and now that the latter is red-hot, it shall scorch and sear ere it cools, and they who heated it shall feel it.