North have a fair prospect of being able to crush the Southern armies, to take their forts, and to reduce any cities which may hold out; but how will they make them send members to Congress, recognize the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and admit the Federal officers who administer the offices vested by the constitution in the Congress? A permanent military occupation of every town and village in all the Southern States would be necessary to carry out these objects; and this seems to English observers to be altogether out of the question. If this difficulty were overcome, the State legislatures would still be protected by the very constitution which the army of occupation would come to enforce; nor would it be possible, without fatal inconsistency, to prohibit free discussion in newspapers, public meetings, and the like. All this would be fatal to continuous compulsion. These observations are so obvious and weighty, that any considerate Englishman would, as far as his private opinion went, be decided by them; but those who insist upon them with so much force ought to remember that there is another side to the subject. To advise brave and high-spirited men to permit, or not to resist, the forcible, wrongful destruction of institutions to which they rightly attach the highest value, on the ground that it is extremely difficult to maintain them, is what men who recognize the claims of courage and spirit ought to be loth to do. That the North has right on its side, there can be no doubt. That it has sustained grievous wrongs and insults, is equally plain. Surely it is a question rather for them than for us, whether there is a reasonable prospect of redressing those wrongs by force of arms. A nation, like an individual, may easily overrate difficulties. It is by no means clear that the tone of the South will be so haughty as it is at present, or that their determination to resist will be unanimous after they have felt the weight of the Northern army. There is no doubt on each side a superabundance of the very fiercest kind of talk, and of protestations of unflinching constancy; but it by no means follows that it would survive the horrors of battles and sieges, and the awful prospect of servile insurrection. At any rate, no one can know whether it will or not till they try. Ireland would have been independent long ago if we had taken the advice of disinterested foreigners about it. In 1857 many writers on the Continent and in the United States supposed that they had proved in the most convincing manner that we never could reconquer India. Nothing that is worth keeping in this world can be kept without an effort; and it is premature to say that fighting is of no use till it has been fairly tried. We have a fair right to dwell on all the difficulties and horrors of the task; but in common justice it must be admitted that the North are fighting in a good cause and for a high stake.