Few political convulsions have hitherto transpired, which have so much puzzled the world to get at the entire motives of the revolt, as the present insurrection in this country.  Were public opinion to be made up from the political literature of Great Britain, or its leading journals, very little certainty would be arrived at as to the merits or demerits of the attempted revolution.  The articles of De Bow’s Review smack little more of a secession origin than the late dissertations on American politics appearing in the British periodicals.  The statements of most of the leading English journals are quite in keeping.  Any one accustomed to the ‘ear-marks’ of secession phraseology and declamation would be at little loss to identify the Southern emissary in connection with the periodicals and press of the British islands.  Hence the hypocrisy and studied concealment of those hidden motives necessary to be made apparent, in order to judge of the merits of secession.

The world has known that for thirty years past there has been a feverish and jealous discontent expressed in the cotton States.  It had its first ebullition in 1832, when South-Carolina assumed the right to nullify the revenue laws of Congress.  Since that time the North has continually been accused of an aggressive policy.  Various extravagant pretenses have from time to time been raised up by the South, and urged as causes for dissolving the Union.  They have always, until recently, been met by forbearance and compromise.

The extension and perpetuation of slavery has been prominent as the open motive for Southern political activity; and equally prominent as one of the motives for dismembering the Union.  There has been another project, however, in connection with the attempted dissolution of the Union, of a most alarming nature:  that project was the intended prostration of the democratic principle in Southern politics.  While a privileged order in government was made the basis of political ambition by the aspirants or leading spirits, it was also to be made the means of perpetuating the institution of slavery.  Whether these adjuncts, slavery perpetuation, and government through a privileged class, were twins of the same birth, is not very material; but whether they existed together as the joint motive to overthrow the national jurisdiction, involves very deeply the present and continuing questions in American politics.

To many gentlemen of intelligence and high standing in the South, the intended establishment of a different order of government, based on privilege of class, has appeared to be the ruling motive.  They have set down the expressed apprehension as to the insecurity of slavery as a hypocritical pretext for revolution; believing that the more absorbing motive was to establish an order of nobility, either with or without monarchy.  There is some plausibility for giving the ambitious motive the greater prominence; but a more severe analysis of the whole question will, it is believed, place slavery perpetuation in the foreground as the origin of all other motives for the conspiracy.