survives the struggle.  If she can be secure in the monopoly of the best cotton lands on the globe, if she can be manufacturer and shop-keeper for the South, if she can deprive the North of one half of its legitimate commerce, if she can obtain the control of the gulf of Mexico, of the mouth of the Mississippi, if she can command the line of sea-coast from Galveston to Fortress Monroe or even to Charleston, and thus compel us to make our way to the Pacific by the passes of the Rocky Mountains exclusively, there is no sacrifice of men, or of money, or of principle, or of justice, that would be deemed too great by the English people and government.  But what then?  Are we to make war upon England because her sympathies and interests run thus with the South?  Is it not wiser to consider why it is that the South is sustained by the interests and sympathies of England?  If slavery for fifty years had been unknown among us, could there be found a hundred men, within the limits of the United States, who would accept a British protectorate under any circumstances or for any purpose whatever?  And is it not therein manifest, that our foreign and domestic perils are alike due to slavery?  And shall we not have dealt successfully with all our foreign difficulties when we shall have established the jurisdiction of the United States over the territory claimed by the rebels?  But until that happy day arrives, we shall not be relieved for an instant from the danger of a foreign war; and if the rebellion last six months longer, there is no reason to suppose that a foreign war can be averted.  When we offer so tempting a prize to nations that wish us ill, can we expect them to put aside the opportunity which we have not the courage and ability to master?  We have observed the hot haste of England to recognize the rebels as belligerents; we have seen the flimsy covering of neutrality that she has thrown over the illegitimate commerce that her citizens have carried on with the South, and from the time, manner, and nature of her demand for the release of Mason and Slidell, we are forced to infer that she will seize every opportunity to bring about an open rupture with the United States.  And though Mr. Seward has carried the country successfully through the difficulty of the Trent, we ought to expect the presentation of demands which we can not so readily and justly meet.  Indeed, enough is known of the Mexican question to suggest the most serious apprehensions of foreign war on that account.

The necessity for speedily crushing the rebellion is as strong as it was at the moment when Lord Lyons made the demand for the release of the persons taken from the deck of the Trent.

Is there any reason, even the slightest, to suppose that by military and naval means alone the rebellion can be crushed by the 19th of April next?

Yet every day’s delay gives the confederate States additional strength, and renders them in the estimation of mankind more and more worthy of recognition and independent government.  Their recognition will be followed by treaties of friendship and alliance; and those treaties will give strength to the rebels and increase the embarrassments of our own government.  It is the necessity of our national life that the settlement of this question should not be much longer postponed.