6 and in the name of democracy, taking courage, strive so much the more, to bewilder and divide public opinion and confound the'judgments of the people upon questions vital to national salvation. At this critical moment there comes from the other side of the Atlantic, from the home of Lafayette and" Rocham- beau, an answer so direct, so pointed and so conclusive, to the most nefarious of the sophistries of the northern parasites of the slave-power, that it cannot fail to aid in confounding their shameless attempt to shift the guilt of the -war from the shoulders of their southern masters and to lay it upon those of the people of New England. This most enlightened and impartial student of American affairs, looking at the whole great conflict, from its inception to the present hour, with a single eye to discover the truth, declares that “ the South alone is guilty.” But this is by no means the chief point of M. Laboulaye’s argument. To yield the dissolution of the national unity— “ the rending asunder of the country,” that, in liis view, is “ the one irreparable degradation.” “ An abdication,” he says, u so shameful, for a people accustomed to liberty, is not even to . be thought of, so long as there remains a single man or a single dollar to risk in the struggle to keep the inheritance of the fathers.” And this is the momentous point which, I think, you, and all men like you, who have the • ability to speak and a great audience who wait daily upon your words, should press home upon the minds and hearts of the people and their rulers. For any people to permit themselves to'meditate the possibility of a surrender of their nationality, indicates a condition of demoralization, which foretells the approach of utter national decay, the coming on of the final shame. But for a people so planted, so nutured by the Divine Providences, so illustrated by the heroic characters and deeds of their great founders, as
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