Events are rapidly maturing their results, and developing the occasion for the direct interference of our Government through its legislative department. There is no time to be lost. Instant action is demanded. Congress ought to take up the subject, without delay, immediately after its meeting, and never cease the investigation until some proper measure shall have been matured and adopted. The great fact must be recognized that the Southern slaves will have been liberated by the agency of the Government, as a means of suppressing the rebellion, by taking away its chief cause and its most powerful support. These unfortunate men, placed in their peculiar condition by no fault of their own, must necessarily receive the protection and become the wards of the Government. Some system of apprenticeship ought to be adopted, and rules and regulations established by law for their government, education, and employment. They ought to be employed in cultivating the soil of their native States for the production of cotton and sugar, so that the former course of things may be as little interrupted as possible, except in the altered condition of the laborers. The lands which will fall into our possession ought to be immediately prepared for cultivation, and the new system of free labor put into practical operation at the earliest moment. The improvement and education of the laborer ought to be considered quite as carefully as the success and productiveness of his work. Our armies will be able to give ample protection to the communities which may be organized under this arrangement; the lands, by the confiscation act, will easily be made available to carry out the scheme; and, doubtless, any number of Union men will be found in all parts of the South, to coöperate in this plan, by the inducement of a fair participation in its legitimate profits. It will be easy to prevent the system from degenerating so as to admit any of the old habits of slavery, or to tolerate any of its oppressions and inhuman practices. In the course of time, the present slaveholders themselves, humbled and subdued, as we hope they soon will be, will find themselves compelled to acquiesce in the policy of the Government, and, in the end, will acknowledge the wisdom of the proceeding which substitutes paid and educated labor for that pernicious system of slavery which has blinded and deluded them to their own destruction. Eventually, though gradually, it may well be anticipated, white labor will be employed in the growth of cotton. The Africans will find their advantage in removing farther south, perhaps to Central America, possibly to Africa; and, before many years, the productions of the teeming South will far surpass what they have been, or could be, under the reign of slavery.