an independent nation to the intervention of foreign powers. The same may be said of the Spanish American colonies, of Greece demanding independence of the Ottoman empire, of Belgium demanding separation from Holland, and of Italy demanding her independence of Austria. The only notable exceptions that we can at this moment recall are Poland and Hungary, but neither of these was able to maintain a prolonged struggle. What reason have we to suppose that the southern rebels will form another exception?

The foreign powers most interested in the conflict have, for over a year, refrained from all intervention, at the expense of great suffering to themselves, and it is no secret that they will not refrain much longer. Nothing can prevent their early effectual intervention in favor of the rebels but immediate, great, and decisive victories by the federal arms, or the emancipation of the negro slaves. We must show that the war is not merely one of subjugation on one side, and of independence on the other, or they will certainly intervene, if the war threatens to be a protracted struggle. We must bring it speedily to a close, or else be compelled to acknowledge the independence of the southern confederacy with such boundaries as the intervening powers shall please to prescribe, for we cannot hope, with the southern rebellion on our hands, to resist successfully the combined power of France and Great Britain, without allies either in the Old World or the New. The only certain way of averting the intervention, and saving the integrity of the republic, is to emancipate the slaves, and enlist the moral senti ments and convictions of the civilized world on the side of the United States.

The government knows the danger, and has sought to avert it, by the resolution adopted by congress proffering pecuniary aid to the states that would initiate emancipation, and relaxing the blockade as to the ports of Beaufort, Port Royal, and New Orleans; but these have failed, for no state has yet accepted the proposition with regard to emancipation, and the rebels have destroyed their cotton and tobacco instead of suffering them to come forward to market. The government now hopes, we presume, to avert it by great and decisive victories at Richmond and Corinth. But at neither of these places shall we obtain a decisive victory, for at either place, the rebels, if they cannot conquer our forces, can retreat, and protract the war indefinitely; and they undoubtedly will do so, for it is their true policy. They

feel that we have thus far gained only barren victories, for they are well assured that if they can protract the war a few weeks longer, foreign intervention will come to their aid. One way, and one way only is open to us; one alternative yet remains, and that is to do what should have been done one year ago,-decree complete and immediate emancipation. It is the only means left us of escaping a shameful mutilation of the republic. In the meantime the president hesitates, longs but fears to strike, and congress wran gles, and lets the golden moment glide by. Terrible will be the responsibility of the government, both executive and legislative, if the rebellion succeeds. On them, not on the rebels, will fall the blasting curse of outraged humanity.

We

But events hasten, and in all human probability, the fate of the nation will be decided, before we can issue from the press, and our words will have only an historic value. The cloud in the East rises, and will perhaps have risen and spread over the whole heavens before our words reach those for whom they are designed. All we can say is, that since the rebellion broke out we have in our humble sphere endeavored to discharge the duties of a loyal citizen. love our country, and as long as we have a country we shall continue to love her, and to hope for her. If let alone, the United States in a reasonable time can reduce the rebels to submission, and maintain the integrity of the national territory. If they fail, it will not be republican institutions that have failed. They will have failed because our northern men consented in the outset to form an unnatural union of freedom with slavery, and because our statesmen and generals have been too anxious to preserve it. We, however, still hope, before we appear in print, congress will have reconsidered its vote rejecting the emancipation bill, and have passed an act freeing all the slaves of the rebels.

SLAVERY AND THE CHURCH.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for October, 1862.]

THERE is no doubt that the majority of our Catholic population are strongly opposed to the abolitionists, and regard them, very unjustly, however, as the real authors of the formidable rebellion now threatening our national life; but we should do them great injustice if we supposed them to be really in favor of negro slavery, or opposed on principle to emancipation. We think their hostility to the abolitionists, since the breaking out of the civil war, very unwise, impolitic, uncalled for, and calculated to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the nation; but we also think it grows more out of their attachment to the Union, than out of any sympathy with slavery or with the rebels.

Various causes have conspired to render Catholics hostile to the abolitionists. The majority of Catholics in this country were, not unnaturally, attached to the Democratic party. They were mostly from the oppressed classes in the mother country, and have naturally, on coming here, associated with the party that made the loudest professions of attachment to liberty and equality, and were, or appeared to be, the most liberal towards foreigners, and especially towards Catholics as naturalized citizens. Besides, the great body of the Catholics migrating to this country, were democrats before their migration, and, by a very innocent mistake, assumed that the Democratic party here represented their previously imbibed democratic views and convictions. The opposing party, whether called Federal, National Republican, or Whig, was always less lavish of its promises, both to Catholics and to foreigners, and in its policy, from the time of the elder Adams to our own day, has been apparently more Protestant and more native American. These facts are sufficient to explain the general devotion of Catholics, especially Catholics of Irish birth or descent, to the Democratic party. As that party gradually became a southern party, and strongly opposed to abolitionism, it was only natural that the Catholics who, though not its leaders, formed a very large proportion of its rank and file, should adopt its views, and follow its policy.

Catholics, especially our Irish Catholics, are strong, not unfrequently intolerant partisans. They have been made so by having been placed for three centuries under the necessity of defending their faith and nationality against Protestant England, seeking constantly to crush and annihilate both. Deprived, to a great extent, of education by the penal laws, and of their natural secular chiefs by apostasy or confiscation, they have had no means of defending themselves and protecting their faith and nationality, but by close party association and intolerance to their enemies, especially such as deserted, or showed symptoms of deserting their ranks. Individual freedom of thought and action were necessarily subordinated to the exigencies of their faith and politics, and they were trained to act as far as possible as a party, according to party tactics, and to carry their points by acting as a great party-machine, sweeping away every thing before it. To desert the party was to desert the church and the national cause, and to prevent desertion they were obliged to treat desertion of party as an abandonment of religion and nationality. The deserter must be hooted, hunted down, rendered unable to live save by taking refuge in the ranks of the enemy. Hence we often find Irish Catholics who regard apostasy from the Democratic party as little less criminal than apostasy from the church.

The leaders of the Democratic party, after the election to the presidency of General Pierce, having adopted the southern policy on the slave question, the Democratic Catholics followed them and their Catholic brethren in the southern states, and became strong and violent anti-abolitionists. They, also, became such by their prejudices against the Puritanism and Sabbath-worship, to which they supposed the abolitionists in general to be addicted, and by the fact that the abolitionists themselves coupled with their abolitionism various other isms peculiarly offensive to Catholics,—-disunionism, woman's-rightsism, amalgamationism, free-loveism, socialism, and, worse than all, Englishism, at least were charged with doing so. They were led by the Democratic press to regard the abolitionists as miserable fanatics, the enemies alike of religion and civilization, and to believe that the peace and safety of the Union required their suppression. We can, then, easily explain their hostility to the abolitionsts without supposing them to be in the least attached to slavery or desirous of perpetuating a social condition always warred against by the church.

We went as far in our hostility to the abolitionists as any of our Catholic brethren have gone. We regarded them as enemies to the Union of these states, and if not checked we thought them not unlikely to bring about secession or civil war. From 1838 to 1857 we were among their sturdiest opponents, and in our own sphere, we have done as much as any other man in the country to set Catholics against the abolition movement. Yet we know that all the time we were doing it we were an ingrained anti-slavery man, detesting slavery in every form, and desiring liberty for every man, whether white or black, yellow, red, or copper-colored. We have seen nothing to convince us that what we know was true of ourselves is not equally true of the majority of our Catholic brethren. The Union, or as we prefer to say, the national question with us always took, and still takes, precedence of the slavery question. We have always believed, and we believe to-day, that liberty and humanity are more interested in maintaining the national integrity and the federal constitution unimpaired, than they are in the abolition of negro slavery. So we have said and repeated any time during the last twenty years. Herein we have differed, differ still, and probably always shall differ from the abolitionists. They place the slavery question before all others, and prefer a division of the Union to a union with slaveholding states. We have differed, still differ, and always shall differ from them on the question of negro equality. They demand the recognition of the negro not only as a man, and as a free man, but as the political and social equal of the white man. They are hardly willing to accept of emancipation unless coupled with negro equality, and we are hardly prepared to accept it if coupled with that equality. We recognize in the negro a man, and assert for him in their plenitude all the natural rights of man, but we do not believe him the equal of the white man, and we would not give him in society with white men equality in respect to those rights derived not immediately from his manhood, but mediately from political or civil society, and in this we express, we apprehend, the general sentiment of the Catholic population of this country.

But we have said the national question takes with us precedence of the slavery question. We would not endanger the peace or union of these states in order to abolish slavery; nor would we suffer the national integrity to be destroyed for the sake of preserving slavery. We hold sla