All that the rational emancipationist requires is a legal beginning.  We have no desire to see it advance more rapidly than the development of the country requires—­in short, what is really needed is simply the assurance that by war or by peace some basis shall be found for ultimately carrying out the views of the fathers of the American Union, and rendering this great nation harmonious and happy.  Every day brings us nearer the great issue,—­not of slavery and anti-slavery,—­but whether slavery is to be assumed as an immutable element in America, or whether government will bring such influences to bear as will lead the way to peace and the rights of free labor.  Every step is leading us to

  THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT.

  O Lord, look kindly on this work for thee! 
    Yes, smile upon the side that’s for the right! 
    To them O grant the glorious arm of might,
  And in the end give them the victory! 
  Free principles are rushing like the sea
    Which opened for the fleeing Israelite,—­
    Free principles, to test their worth in fight,—­
  And woe to them that ’twixt the surges be! 
  And as, O Lord, thou then did’st show thy care,
    And mad’st a grave to drink thy enemy,
  So now, O Father, sink him in despair—­
    The only blight we own—­cursed Slavery. 
  O then will end the conflict!  Yes, God, then
  We’ll be indeed a nation of FREE MEN!

* * * * *

The N.O. Delta is full of indignation at the Southern men who are alarmed for their property, and betrays, in its anger, the fact that these disaffected persons are not few in the Pelican State.  But, plucking up courage, it declares that—­

    Our people will retire into the interior, and in their mountains
    and swamps they will maintain a warfare which must ultimately
    prove successful.

Doubtful—­very.  In the first place, ‘our people’ can not very well swamp it like runaway negroes, and, secondly, they will encounter, in the mountains, the Union men of the South.  Give us the cities and the level country for a short time, and we shall very soon find the Pelicandidates for comfortable quarters rolling back, by thousands, into Unionism.

* * * * *

As we write, there is a panic in Richmond, caused by the discovery that there is a large body of Union men in the city itself, headed by JOHN MINOR BOTTS, who seems to have determined to ‘head off’ the secession party in its stronghold, ’or die’—­he having, since the decease of JOHN TYLER, turned his ‘heading off’ abilities against JEFF DAVIS.  The Examiner mentions, in terror, the confession of the Union prisoners, that there are in Richmond ’thousands of arms concealed, and men enrolled, who would use them on the first approach of the Yankee army.’  One of the arrested, a Mr. STEARNS, when led to the prison, surveyed it in a most contemptuous manner, remarking ’If you are going to imprison all the Union men in Richmond, you will have to provide a much larger jail than this.’