threat of dissolving the Union over the North as a means of coercion, and there can be no doubt at all that the threat has been most effective. For a long period Northern politicians have made every sort of concession to the South, in order to avoid the question which is now forced upon them, for no assignable reason except that for the first time for the last quarter of a century a Northern president has been chosen. It is scarcely possible to imagine any state of things more insufferable to men of spirit, than such a course of conduct as this. Indeed in many of the steps of the long struggle between the North and the South it is impossible to deny that the Northerners showed great want of resolution, and down to the attack on Fort Sumter they continued to display a degree of forbearance which was hardly dignified. It is of course difficult, if not impossible, for any one who was not in America, or who had not an intimate personal knowledge of the state of feeling there, to express any positive opinion as to the course of the extraordinary change which that transaction produced. It seems, however, to be like the case of a man who, after putting up with all sorts of hard words and rough conduct, is interrupted in the midst of expostulations and offers of compromise by a box on the ear. Some ridicule was cast by the English papers on what was described as the unstatesmanlike and technically legal view of the question between the North and South, and of the way in which it was to be treated, which the President put forward in his proclamation on taking office. Some of our most influential newspaper writers thought that it fell below the occasion, and that a manifesto announcing a course of policy based on general considerations would have been more appropriate. Such criticisms betray ignorance of the fundamental principles of the American constitution. The consequence of the institution of the Supreme and Federal courts, and of the reduction of the constitution to the form of a written document technically interpreted by professional lawyers, has been to remove numerous questions which we treat as questions of policy to the domain of strict law, and to invest legal doctrines with a prominence and importance unknown to any other nation. So long as no actual physical force was applied to the property or forces of the Union, the Federal law was not broken. The crime of treason is defined to consist in “levying war against the United States, or adhering to their enemies only.” The President has well-defined legal powers and responsibilities, and is bound by oath to act upon them. It is, therefore, natural enough that both he and the Northern States generally should have submitted patiently to acts on the part of the Southern States which no Continental government would have permitted on the part of any member of the nation, and which even in the British Islands would have been illegal.