to prove this, seeing that it is absolutely proved by the absence of any clause giving such license to the separate States.  Such license would have been destructive to the very idea of a great nationality.  Where would New England have been, as a part of the United States, if New York, which stretches from the Atlantic to the borders of Canada, had been endowed with the power of cutting off the six Northern States from the rest of the Union?  No one will for a moment doubt that the movement was revolutionary, and yet infinite pains are taken to prove a fact that is patent to every one.

It is revolutionary; but what then?  Have the Northern States of the American Union taken upon themselves, in 1861, to proclaim their opinion that revolution is a sin?  Are they going back to the divine right of any sovereignty?  Are they going to tell the world that a nation or a people is bound to remain in any political status because that status is the recognized form of government under which such a people have lived?  Is this to be the doctrine of United States citizens—­of all people?  And is this the doctrine preached now, of all times, when the King of Naples and the Italian dukes have just been dismissed from their thrones with such enchanting nonchalance because their people have not chosen to keep them?  Of course the movement is revolutionary; and why not?  It is agreed now among all men and all nations that any people may change its form of government to any other, if it wills to do so—­and if it can do so.

There are two other points on which these Northern statesmen and logicians also insist, and these two other points are at any rate better worth an argument than that which touches the question of revolution.  It being settled that secession on the part of the Southerners is revolution, it is argued, firstly, that no occasion for revolution had been given by the North to the South; and, secondly, that the South has been dishonest in its revolutionary tactics.  Men certainly should not raise a revolution for nothing; and it may certainly be declared that whatever men do they should do honestly.

But in that matter of the cause and ground for revolution, it is so very easy for either party to put in a plea that shall be satisfactory to itself!  Mr. and Mrs. Jones each had a separate story.  Mr. Jones was sure that the right lay with him; but Mrs. Jones was no less sure.  No doubt the North had done much for the South; had earned money for it; had fed it; and had, moreover, in a great measure fostered all its bad habits.  It had not only been generous to the South, but over-indulgent.  But also it had continually irritated the South by meddling with that which the Southerners believed to be a question absolutely private to themselves.  The matter was illustrated to me by a New Hampshire man who was conversant with black bears.  At the hotels in the New Hampshire mountains it is customary to find black bears chained to poles.  These bears are