cess.

Such multiplied and systematic questioning of Nature on agricultural subjects is, at present, scarcely known. Yet there is every reason to believe that it would achieve as important results for agriculture as it has already done for Natural Science. For it, such a system, as is proposed, would furnish not alone the necessary suggestions, but the means of carrying them out in practice.

Let practical men be thus enlisted in the search for general principles, and nothing is hazarded in the assertion that agriculture would make greater progress in ten years of time than it will otherwise attain in a century.

In the plan we propose, thus developed, we should have a sort of practical realization of that fancy of Solomon's House in the New Atlantis of Lord Bacon, which had its "merchants of light," to collect and distribute the knowledge of others, its "miners or pioneers," to devise new experiments and its "inoculators who do execute and repeat the experiments so directed."

Another effect of the realization of such a system of agricultural education would be a perception of the necessity of permanent and well endowed institutions, which should carry, to a greater degree of perfection, the advantages which such a system presents. It would call forth the interest of enlightened and liberal men, and result in the establishment of Agricultural Colleges, which would offer to the enterprising young farmer as extended and liberal a course of instruction as is now pursued by the student of a learned profession.

We remark, in conclusion, that the experiment of such a course of instruction as is above proposed, in which practical and scientific talent shall be combined and which shall accommodate itself to the means and the convenience of our agricultural population, is to be made at New Haven, during the month of February next. Its success is regarded as ensured by the fact that a score or more of the leading Agriculturists and Horticulturists of the country are associated with scientific men in the execution of the plan.

ARTICLE X.-THE MORAL OF HARPER'S FERRY.

IN 1854, the passage of what is still remembered as "the Nebraska bill," marked a new era in the conflict between freedom and slavery. The original policy of the United States government, as related to slavery, declared itself in the ordinance of 1787, before the adoption of the Federal Constitution. It was reäffirmed in the first Congress under the Constitution, by enactments confirming and carrying into effect the ordinance of 1787. The States of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia-then the only States that were zealous for slavery-recognized at a very early period the settled policy of the Federal government, by annexing to the acts in which they severally ceded to the Union their claims to western lands, a proviso against the abolition of slavery, or the emancipation of slaves by Congress. Thus "the territory south of the Ohio," and afterwards "the Mississippi territory," were reserved for slavery, and the States of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama became slaveholding States, not by the policy of the Federal government as administered in those better days, but in consequence of a restriction imposed upon the Constitutional power of Congress in the special compact by which the southwestern territories became the property of the Union. The first deviation from the original and statesmanlike policy of prohibiting slavery in the territories was consequent upon the purchase of Louisiana. What is now the State of Louisiana, was already occupied with a very considerable population of slaveholders and slaves; and, in the circumstances then existing, the abolition of slavery there, by the Federal power, might naturally enough be deemed impracticable. To some extent, also, slavery was already planted in that part of the purchase which is now the State of Missouri; and when a distinct territorial government was provided for Missouri, the policy of not disturbing an established in

stitution prevailed again over the policy of excluding slavery from the territories. Thus the fit opportunity for the exclusion of slavery from Missouri by Federal legislation was lost; and the attempt of 1818-19 to withhold from the inhabitants of that territory the right of becoming a State, save under the condition of their abolishing forever the slavery which already existed among them, must needs fail. But the result of that conflict was a reassertion of the old policy in a proviso incorporated with the act for the admission of Missouri as a State. That proviso, while it surrendered to slavery not only the State of Missouri, but all that part of the Louisiana purchase which lies south of the southern boundary of Missouri, was a sacred guarantee for freedom in all the remainder of the wide domain which had been purchased from France. In other words, while the compromise made no provision for the positive abolition of slavery in the regions in which slavery might be regarded as having already obtained an actual existence under French or Spanish laws, or through former neglect on the part of Congress, it pledged the public faith for the prohibition of slavery beforehand in all the immense remainder of the purchase. A very clear distinction may be drawn between the policy of prohibiting slavery in advance, where there is as yet no slavery, and the policy of abolishing slavery in a territory already inhabited by slaveholders and their slaves. To that extent, the original policy of the Federal government, in regard to slavery in the territories, was modified by the Missouri compromise. Accordingly, when Florida was transferred from the Spanish monarchy to the government of the United States, there was no attempt to abolish slavery there. A new policy directly subversive of that established by the ordinance of 1787, was attempted in relation to the territories acquired by the Mexican war; and the attempt obtained, in 1850, a partial and equivocal success. It was only in 1854, that a new system was definitely inaugurated by a repeal of the prohibition of slavery in the territories protected by the Missouri compromise.

The true meaning of the Nebraska bill, and especially the intention and effect of the clause repealing the prohibition

of slavery, are points on which a sharp contention has arisen among the authors and patrons of that measure. Mr. Senator Douglas, as representing the necessities of his own party in the free-labor States, and Mr. Attorney-General Black, as representing the Administration now in power, are wasting much ink and paper on the question whether, under the new policy, and according to the new constitution which the Supreme Court has undertaken to impose upon the Union, the inhabitants of a territory have a right of "unfriendly legislation" in regard to the introduction of slavery upon the soil which they are redeeming from the wilderness; but there is little room to doubt that the eminent men whom we have named, and all their associates in the conspiracy for the repeal of the Missouri compromise, know in their consciences, as every intelligent citizen knows, what the motive was of the repealing clause in the Nebraska bill, and what the expectation was of those by whom it was contrived, and by whose influence it was carried through the forms of legislation. The motive was not the general welfare or interest of the United States, nor was it the interest or welfare of any separate State or portion of the Union; for half the intelligence of those men was perfectly competent to know that the true interest of all the States as joint proprietors and sovereigns of that wide domain, and the true interest of each distinct State as a partner in that ownership and sovereignty, required the continued exclusion of slavery from the territories. Still less can it be pretended that the men who contrived and carried the repealing clause, had any thought of promoting thereby the prosperity, the wealth, the peace, or the moral and social welfare of the yet unborn States that were to come into being on the broad domain over which Congress, in the enactment of that organic law, was putting forth the highest possible act of political sovereignty. Every consideration of that immutable justice, and of those human rights, for which alone states and governments have any right to exist-every consideration of sound statesmanship or of honest patriotism-was sacrificed to the supposed interests of a party. It was thought that an ingenious "dodge," by which the responsibility of Congress for

the existence or prohibition of slavery in the territories could be got rid of, might save the party from division, and enable its leaders to make Presidents at their will. Therefore it was

determined that, under the lying pretense of a regard for "popular sovereignty," and of newly discovered scruples about the meaning of the Constitution, the momentous question of slavery or freedom in each territory should be left to the chances of a scramble among the early settlers. And the expectation of the conspirators-if not the explicit understanding among them-was, that inasmuch as Kansas lay upon the western border of Missouri, and was conveniently accessible from other slaveholding States, and inasmuch as the peaceable and industrious people of the free-labor States were not familiar with the use of bowie-knife and revolver, and therefore not likely to place themselves in any dangerous proximity to the armed champions of slavery, Kansas would of course become a slaveholding State, while Nebraska might be yielded to freedom by way of offset or compromise. Of course there was a possibility that some opponents of slavery might be fanatical enough to attempt the organization of a free-state party among the settlers, and to open a discussion and agitation of the dangerous question; but there would be an easy and effectual remedy. A little of that rough discipline which. suppresses freedom of the press, and freedom of speech and thought, in the slaveholding States, would answer the same end in Kansas, and so the Union would once more be saved. Such was the wisdom of the conspirators-such the plan which they had devised. That there would be a conflict in Kansas, on the question of admitting or excluding slavery, everybody could see; for the very pretense and ostentation of the policy was that the settlers in each territory, coming in promiscuously from all parts of the Union, strangers to each other, with all sorts of opinions, prejudices, sympathies, manners, and habits, were to decide that question among themselves. That the authors of the measure repealing the prohibition of slavery in that territory expected a conflict, cannot be doubted without supposing them ignorant to a degree beyond what has ever yet been imputed to them. As little can it be doubted that the