4 to show that a war may be censured as unjust or inexpedient without a violation of the duty which we owe to our country. No one can dispute this proposition ; but did that great orator ever seek to inflame one section of his country against another while engaged in a struggle with a common foe ? Did he ever try to induce Scotland or Yorkshire to cast its lot with revolutionary or imperial France, or intimate that if the legions of Napoleon crossed the channel, they would find friends and adherents in Liverpool and London ? Would the English people have suffered such invidious comparisons, as those which have recently appeared in the Evening Journal, to be drawn between their own Government and that of France, for the purpose of aiding the latter in the work of conquest? Some of the persons, who are now loudest in vindicating the Journal, were vehement three years since against the Mayor of this city, for not preventing Mr. Curtis from lecturing on a literary subject, because he was suspected of being an Abolitionist, and interposing the shield of the law between him and the mob. Does the freedom of the press lie nearest to the heart of these people, or the desire to subvert the freest Government that exists upon the earth ? Can anything be more painful than the spectacle of a great ngtion, compelled by the excesses of its own citizens, to ■choose between the dangers inseparable from restraining the freedom of speech, and the still greater dangers to liberty and independence resulting from its license ? Arguments deduced from considerations of national honor, and addressed to patriotism, can have but little weight with men who think seriously of turning their backs on New England, on Bunker Hill, and Lexington, to clasp the hands yet stained with the blood of the New England men and Pennsylvanians, who fell at Antietam and Fredericksburg. But the scheme of Mr. Hughes is not less contrary to practical good sense, than to morals and right feeling. The lakes, the great canals and rail roads, leading from the Northwest to the seaboard, are in the hands of New York and Pennsylvania, and with them the keys of the Union. Not one-fifth part of the exports of the Western States finds its way to the Gulf of Mexico ; the rest takes the direct route to Europe, over the eastern lines of communication. Much as the West desires and values the Mississippi, she would, if compelled to choose between the friendship of the Middle States and that of the Southwest, prefer the formed as in every sense the more beneficial. While the men of New York and Pennsylvania remain true to the Union, we may feel sure that the Western men will not leave it. Besides, no calculation can be safe, even in a commercial point of view, which fails to take account of moral and intellectual influences. Trade requires security ; to be placed upon a basis free from sudden and violent changes. An indispensable prerequisite to our forming a stable union with the South, is that the South should confess itself insincere in all that it has said and done during the last three years and consent to unite with us. We shall in vain sue for their favor, if they see in our suppliant and humble attitude, fresh occasion for the display of the ingratitude and arrogance with which they broke all connection with their best friends at the North. But even if this difficulty were overcome by allowing the Confederacy to dictate its own terms, and inducing
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