The whole history of the question of slavery and of the party questions connected with it for the last forty years are proofs of this.[1] It is far less familiar to Englishmen than from its importance it deserves to be. The names, indeed, of the Missouri Compromise, Mason and Dixie’s Line, the Border Ruffians, and the War in Kansas, are familiar enough to us all, but hardly any one attaches any definite meaning to them. The subject, however, forms a connected whole, and when its bearings are understood, it throws great light on the present proceedings, both of the North and of the South. In order to understand the matter, it is necessary to say a few words as to the constitution of Congress. Each State has in the House of Representatives one member for every 30,000 inhabitants. Three-fifths of the slaves count as inhabitants, and by this means the Southerners, though their white population is far smaller than the population of the Northern States, have about as many representatives. Moreover, each State, large or small, sends two representatives to the Senate. When the constitution was established, slave-holding was nearly universal; but it was acknowledged by all the leading statesmen of the day, that it was an evil, though they described it as an inherited, and for the time an inevitable one. In the Northern States, where the slaves were few, and where white labour could obviously compete with that of negroes, slavery was rapidly abolished, and by degrees the distinction between slave and free States came to coincide with the distinction between North and South. As this gradually became the leading feature in American politics, the Southern States exerted themselves to the utmost to obtain a majority, or, at any rate, to secure an equality of votes, in the Senate. The only way in which this could be done was by adding to the Union as many slave States as possible. As Miss Martineau truly says, “the key to the entire policy of the United States for the last quarter of a century is the effort of the South to maintain a majority in the Senate at Washington.” The original United States, as is well known, were thirteen in number, namely, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Maryland. The western boundaries of several of these, and especially those of Virginia, were almost entirely undefined. Soon after the recognition of independence, the boundaries of Virginia were fixed, the lands excluded thrown into a common stock, and an arrangement was made that slavery should never be established on them. Whether or no this arrangement was constitutional, is a question which has been much discussed, but it was made and has been acted on. Several States, including Ohio, Kentucky, and others, were formed out of them.