the great European manufacturer to reciprocate the benefits of free trade, whereby the South might enjoy all the advantages of its fertile soil and fine climate, or to transfer these advantages to the North, by meeting Great Britain on the ground of prohibition and exaction. The latter was preferred, because to the interest of that section, which, having the local majority, had the power.

"Under this system, Great Britain has never wanted a pretext for her corn-laws, and her high duties on all our products. Thus we sell all we make subject to these deductions, which, in many instances, leave much less to us than what goes into the British Treasury.

"Here, too, is the pretext to the Government of the United States for their exactions in return. The misfortune is, that the Southern planter had to bear both burdens. One-half the price of his products is seized by the British Government, and half the value of what he gets for the other half is seized by the Government of the United States.

"This they call retaliation and indemnification. It was indemnifying an interest which had not been injured, by the farther injury of one which had been injured. It was impoverishing the South for the benefit of the North, to requite the South for having been already impoverished for the benefit of Great Britain. Still it was 'indemnifying ourselves.' Much virtue in that word, 'ourselves.' It is the language used by the giant to the dwarf in the fable; the language of the brazen pot to the earthen pot; the language of all dangerous or interested friendship.

"I remember seeing an illustration of this sort of indemnity in the case of a woman who was whipped by her husband. She went complaining to her father, who whipped her again, and sent her back. 'Tell your husband,' said he, 'that as often as he whips my daughter, I will whip his wife.''

"But what remedy has been proposed for these things?" asked Douglas.

"A remedy has been proposed and applied," replied B. "The remedy of legislation for the benefit, not of the rulers, but of the ruled." "But in what sense will you say that our legislation has been for the benefit of the rulers alone? Are we not all our own rulers?"

"Yes," replied B—, "if you again have recourse to the use of that comprehensive word 'we,' which identifies things most dissimilar, and binds up, in the same bundle, things most discordant. If the South and North are one; if the Yankee and the Virginian are one; if light and darkness, heat and cold, life and death, can all be identified; then 'we' are our own rulers. Just so, if the State will consent to be identified with the Church, then we pay tithes with one hand, and receive them with the other. While the Commons identify themselves with the Crown, 'we' do but pay taxes to ourselves. And if Virginians can be

fooled into identifying themselves with the Yankees—a fixed tax-paying minority, with a fixed tax-receiving majority-it will still be the same thing; and they will continue to hold a distinguished place among the innumerable 'we's' that have been gulled into their own ruin ever since the world began. It is owing to this sort of deception, played off on the unthinking multitude, that in the two freest countries in the world, the most important interests are taxed for the benefit of lesser interests. In England, a country of manufacturers, they have been starved that agriculture may thrive. In this, a country of farmers and planters, they have been taxed that manufacturers may thrive. Now I will requite Lord Chatham's well-intentioned declaration, by saying that England ought not to make a barrel of flour for herself. I say, too, that if her rulers, and the rulers of the people of America, were true to their trust, both sayings would be fulfilled. She would be the workhouse, and here would be the granary of the world. What would become of the Yankees? As I don't call them 'we,' I leave them to find the answer to that question."

A

A NOVELIST'S PICTURE OF VAN BUREN.

[From the Same.]

S the events of the last ten years make it probable that none of my younger readers have ever seen the august dignitary of whom I speak, and as few of us are like to have occasion to see him in future, a particular description of his person may not be unacceptable. Though far advanced in life, he was tastily and even daintily dressed, his whole costume being exactly adapted to a diminutive and dapper person, a fair complexion, a light and brilliant blue eye, and a head which might have formed a study for the phrenologist, whether we consider its ample developments or its egg-like baldness. The place of hair was supplied by powder, which his illustrious example had again made fashionable. The revolution in public sentiment which, commencing sixty years ago, had abolished all the privileges of rank and age; which trained up the young to mock at the infirmities of their fathers, and encouraged the unwashed artificer to elbow the duke from his place of precedence; this revolution had now completed its cycle. While the sovereignty of numbers was acknowledged, the convenience of the multitude had set the fashions. But the reign of an individual had been restored, and the taste of that individual gave law to the general taste. Had he worn a wig, wigs would have been the rage. But as phrenology had taught him to be justly proud of his high and polished forehead, and the intellectual de

velopments of the whole cranium, he eschewed hair in all its forms, and barely screened his naked crown from the air with a light covering of powder. He seemed, too, not wholly unconscious of something worthy of admiration in a foot, the beauty of which was displayed to the best advantage by the tight fit and high finish of his delicate slipper. As he lay back on the sofa, his eye rested complacently on this member, which was stretched out before him, its position shifting, as if unconsciously, into every variety of grace. Returning from thence, his glance rested on his hand, fair, delicate, small, and richly jewelled. It hung carelessly on the arm of the sofa, and the fingers of this, too, as if rather from instinct than volition, performed sundry evolutions on which the eye of majesty dwelt with gentle complacency.

W

A SOUTHERN MARRIAGE.

[From the Same.]

HEN they met again at breakfast, the swimming eye and changing cheek of Delia told that she had been made acquainted with all that had passed. The countenance of Douglas beamed with high excitement, at once pleasant and painful. .A glance of triumphant encouragement to Delia, and her answering tearful smile, showed that they perfectly understood each other. Indeed, it was time they should, for it had been settled that B, who was a resident and justice of the peace of the county, should perform the marriage ceremony, according to the unceremonious law of North Carolina, immediately after breakfast.

As soon as it was over they adjourned to the parlor, where B, drawing Delia to him, seated her on his knee. "I don't half like this business," said he. "I have no mind to take an active part in giving up my own little girl to this young fellow. I am too old to think of loving and fighting all in a breath, as he does, and I thought to wait till the wars were over, and here he comes and cuts me out. But I am determined to do nothing in prejudice of my claim, until I find that I have no chance." "Young man," added he, in a tone gradually changing from playful to serious, "do you love this dear girl with that faithful single-hearted love, which man owes to a woman who gives him all her heart, and intrusts to him all her happiness, and all her hopes?"

As he said this, he took the hand of Douglas, and went on: "Do you thus love her, and will you in good faith manifest this love, by being to her a true and devoted husband in every change and vicissitude of life, so long as life shall last? Answer me Douglas," he continued, with a

voice approaching to sternness, and a fixed and searching look, while he strongly grasped the young man's hand.

"Assuredly, I will," said Douglas, somewhat hurt.

"And you, dear," said B- resuming his kind and playful tone, "do you love this young fellow in like sort, and will you, on your part, be to him thus faithful as his wife?"

While B- said this, the blushing Delia tried to disengage herself. But he detained her, and caught the hand with which she endeavored to loosen his from her waist, and held it fast. At length she hid her face on his neck, whispering: "You know I do. You know I will." "Then God bless you, my children," said B- -, bringing their hands together and grasping both firmly in one of his, "for you are married as fast as the law can tie you."

In a moment the whole party were on their feet, each expressing a different variety of surprise. Douglas was the first to understand his situation fully, as appeared by his springing forward and catching his bride to his bosom, imprinting on her pure cheek the kiss that holy nature prompts, and that all the caprices of fashion (thank God!) can never shame. From him she escaped into the arms of her mother, who, caressing her with murmured tenderness, looked half reproachfully at B. Then smiling through the tear that filled her large blue eye, she shook her finger at him, and said, "Just like you! Just like you!" "Fairly cheated you of your scene, Margaret. All the matronly airs, and maidenly airs, that you and Delia have been rehearsing this morning, gone for nothing. And there is dear little Lucia crying as if to break her heart, because sister Delia was married before she could fix her pretty little face for the occasion. Never mind, dear! When your turn comes there will be less hurry, and you shall have a ceremony as long as the whole liturgy. Well, Douglas, you will not quarrel with me, I am sure; and I think Delia will forgive me for the trick I played her. You have but an hour to stay together, and where was the sense of giving that up to the flutter and agitation of a deferred ceremony? I suspect if I were always to manage the matter in this way, I should have my hands as full of business as the dentist that used to conjure people's teeth out of their mouths without their knowing it, while he was pretending just to fix his instrument. But go, my children. Empty your full hearts into each other's bosoms, and thank me for the privilege."

Robert Walsh.

BORN in Baltimore, Md., 1784. DIED in Paris, France, 1859.

THE EXPERIMENT OF EMANCIPATION.

[An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain respecting the United States of America. 1819.]

THE

HE doctrine so long popular and pursued in England, and maintained openly by some of her most distinguished statesmen, that the laboring classes should not be enlightened, lest they might become unwilling to perform the necessary drudgery of their station in life, and prone to rise against the monarchical scheme of social order, was not, perhaps, in her case, altogether without foundation as to the latter topic of apprehension. Now, though the very reverse is the soundest policy for us, with our institutions, as respects the whites, that doctrine, if the right of the southern American to consult his own safety and the ultimate happiness of his slaves, be admitted, is unquestionably just in relation to the body of the southern negroes. You could not attempt to improve and fashion their minds upon a general system, so far as to make them capable of freedom in the mass and apart, without exposing yourself, even in the process, or in proportion as they began to understand and value their rights, to feel the abjection of their position and employment, calculate their strength, and be fit for intelligent concert— to formidable combinations among them, for extricating themselves from their grovelling and severe labors at once, and for gaining, not merely an equality in the state, but an ascendancy in all respects. The difference of race and color would render such aspirations in them much more certain, prompt, and active, than in the case of a body of villeins of the same color and blood with yourselves, whom you might undertake to prepare for self-government. The Duke of Wellington, in the late debate on Catholic emancipation in the British House of Peers, expressed his belief that the Catholics of Ireland, if relieved from their disabilities, would endeavor to put down the reformed religion, and this because of the feelings which must accompany the recollection, that that religion had been established in their country by the sword. What consequences, then, might we not expect in the case of our slaves, from the sense of recent suffering and degradation, and from the feelings. incident to the estrangement and insulation growing out of the indelible distinctions of nature?

I know of but one mode of correcting those feelings and preventing alienation, hostility, and civil war; of making the experiment of general