We may as well make up our minds to it first as last, that we must at every effort and at _any_ cost, conquer this rebellion. There is no alternative. This done, the great question which remains to settle, is, how shall we manage the conquered provinces? There are fearful obstacles in the way; great difficulties, such as no one has as yet calmly realized; difficulties at home and abroad. We have a fierce and discontented population to keep under; increased expenses in every department of government; but it is needless to sum them up. The first and most apparent difficulty is that involved in the form of government to be adopted. As the rebellious States have, by the mere act of secession, forfeited all State rights, and thereby reduced themselves to territories, this question would seem to settle itself without difficulty, were it not that a vast body of the ever-mischief-making, ever-meddling, and never-contented politicians (who continue to believe that the millennium would at once arrive were Emancipation only extinguished) cry out against this measure as an infringement of those Southern rights which are so dear to them. They argue and hope in vain. Never more will the South come back to be served and toadied to by them as of old; never more will they receive contemptuous patronage and dishonorable honors. It is all passed. Those who look deepest into this battle, and into the future, see a resistance, grim and terrible, to the death; and one which will call for the strictest and sternest watch and ward. It will only be by putting fresh life and fresh blood into Secessia, that union can be practically realized. Out of the old Southern stock but little can be made. A great portion must be kept under by the strong hand; a part may be induced to consult its own interests, and reform. But the great future of the South, and the great hope of a revived and improved Union will be found in colonizing certain portions of the conquered territory with free white labor. A more important topic, and one so deeply concerning the most vital prosperity of the United States, was never before submitted to the consideration of her citizens. If entertained by Government and the people on a great, enterprising, and vigorous scale, as such schemes were planned and executed by the giant minds of antiquity, it may be made productive of such vast benefits, that in a few years at most, the millions of Americans may look back to this war as one of the greatest blessings that ever befell humanity, and Jefferson Davis and his coadjutors be regarded as the blind implements by which God advanced human progress, as it had never before advanced at one stride. But to effect this, it should be planned and executed as a great, harmonious, and centrally powerful scheme, not be tinkered over and frittered away by all the petty doughfaces in every village. In great emergencies, great acts are required.