Even if
loyal duty don't prompt it, interest will. For slavery, after
having been crippled as it has been by the war, even if it could
live, would only be an encumbrance. But it can't live. It is
already half dead. Let the loyal men of the South finish it and
bury it in their own way_.'
Compare, now, in the fair spirit of criticism, the beginning and the end
of this unstatesman-like editorial. Slavery, we are emphatically told,
is dying; first, because the presence of the war in its immediate
vicinity is killing it; and, secondly, because free discussion, excited
by the war and the presence of Northern influence incidental to the war,
is killing it--_therefore let us hasten to withdraw the military power,
and the causes of free discussion, where, for a century, it has been
annihilated until now, and has only now begun to exist, and leave in
full activity all the causes of reaction and the reestablishment of the
old STATUS. 'There is not the slightest chance, whatever,' says the
writer, 'of slavery being saved_, IF PRESENT CAUSES CONTINUE.' Therefore
_hasten to discontinue present causes, by all means, and surrender the
field to the operation of the old causes. 'The chain'_ of the slave
'_must be broken when the civil law, which alone gives it strength,
passes away_.
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