The Express.
London, England, 1848-08-23 00:00:00

which the Welshman could not only see the church
but also hear the psalmody.
This is not a time, however, at which it is either
wise or decent to argue this question upon the narrow
grounds of persocal dexterity or political tactics. Mr.
HERRIEB told the house very truly that, however a
majority in parliament may decide, there is a majority
out of doors which will pass a definitive resolution.
We stand upon a very ominous threshold.
There is a suspicion, and a suspicion rest-
ing upon evidence sadly over plain, that,
irrespective of future vicissitudes of sunshine
and temperature, the result of the harvest w ill not be
at all propitious. We are already named by pre-
monitory symptoms in the money market that the
advent of our depressed exchange is a contingency
already producing an tfT et. lu Ireland the end of
the rebellion of the sword will in all human proba-
bility be a rebellion of the telly. In the face of these
contingencies the 'mimesl coma.on sense of the
country is expressed in a very ample form of
intetroga'ory, and this is the tenour of it. Is
it consistent with any reasonable rule of con-
duct that, in spite of the most overwhelm-
ing evidence, a statute already the accia,ary
of so dire a mischief should be retained in full
and undiminished integrity ? The government say
decidedly it is ; Mr. HERMES says decidedly it is
not ; and probably about the end of next October thu
country will be able to give a pretty positive opinion
as to which is tho best conclusion.

IT is melancholy to reflect that, whilst all the aspi-
rations of the old world tend in the direction of free-

dom, the question which chiefly agitates the Lew is
that of the extension and perpetuation of shivery.
From the viry first we regarded the Mexican war
as an t vent which would prove more perilous to the
aggressor than to the p lily attacked. Apart
from the moral issues which it involved, there were

eons:derations of a dithrent description which should
have induced the American people to avoid a collision
with Mexico; but these considerations were ovcr-
.

looked. The war with the neighbouring tepublic wee
planned, precipitated, and earn( d out to gratify the pas-
RCM which had been aroused against this country by
theadministration, in conducting its negotiations with
respect to On gun. Hostilities have now ceased ; the
American troops are withdrawn from Mexico, and the
mutual relations of the two republics are once more
regulated by a treaty of peace. The war hos ended
gloriously for the American arms, but it has be-
queatht d a troublesome legacy to the c mqueror. It
has raised in a serious shape the gravest question
that can agitate American parties, and already hide
fair to array, ere long, against each other, the two
great sections of the confederacy.
The q,uestion of slavery has been felt by all parties
in the lmion to be one of such transcendent difficulty,
that • constant desire has been manifested to poet-
pone, as long as possible, its final decision. Tne
issues were so momentous, the contingencies so grave,
which it involvtd, that they have systw matically
shrunk from grappling with it, avoiding by successive
compromises its solution whenever circumstances have
conspired to bring it forward.
In the south the question partakes of a social and
political character; in the north it is almost entirely
political. The feeling in favour of abolition is mach
more extensive in the latter than the number and
strength of the abolition party would imply, the
great bulk of the population of the free slates lc, eying
aloof from that party, some because they regard its
tactics as calculated to defeat its own object, and
others on account of the delicacy of the sutjeet and
tho danger of its precipitating a collision between
the north and the south. But it may be said gene-
rally of the whole north that it is opposed :o slavery,
sensible of the stigma that it casts upon the name of
the republic, and well knowing that, should a servile
insurrection occur, of which every day increases the
probability, it would hare to share equally with the
south in the dangers and the expenses of suppressing
it. The influence cf the north is, therefore, steadily
dirt ctcd against the system ; but the pressure from
that quarter has not as yet Leen suff.tiently violent to
endanger the integrity of the union.
It has been sufficiently great, however, to put the
south in an attitude of constant defence. An anta-
gor ism is thus steadily at work between the
free and the slave states, the chief mani-
frstations of which arc generaly confined to the
political arena at Was:lingua]. The question of
slavery has thus divided the American people into
two great political parties, the line of division be-
tween them being a geographical one, and having uo
reference whatever to any of the other party ques-
tions about which we hear so much, and which give
rise to such noisy and virulent contention. In addi-
tion to the question of political balance which it has
raised between the two great sections of the union,
the south contend for slavery as a social institution,
the sad& n removal of which, however deplorable
may be its presence, would visit it with ruin and

disaster.
The parties thus arrayed, and the question, by
consent of both, being treated between them as purely
a political one, the difficulty with which each has had
to contend was to prevent the other from occupying
a position of political ascendancy. Indeed so perilous
would such an ascendancy be on the part of either,
that both, aware that its attainment would brir g the
controversy to the dreaded crisis, have been anxious
to prevent its attainment by the one or the other.
The struggle then has been hitherto mere to preserve
the existing balance than to disturb it. For a long
time circumstances favoured this object. The great
national domain, out of which new states have been
from time to time carved, lie, like the states
themselves, almost equally divided by the
line separating the slave-holding from the free com-
munities. This enabled the two sections, as new
states were admitted, still to perpetuate the balance,
for wherever a slave state was admitted a free
state was admitted at the same time. Thus,
when Arkansas was erected into a state in the
south, Michigan was admitted as one in the
north. When lowa came in as a free state, Florita
balanced it as a slave state. And so with Wisconsin
and Texas. As all the states are equally represented
in the Senate, it is evident that this system, so long
as it could be pursued, would keep the beam from
dipping at one end or the other ; and so long as this
could be effected a convenient means was afforded of
staving off the final issue.
It was on the annexation of Texas that parties
began to perceive that they could not much longer
avoid meeing the difficulty in the face. It is true
that simultaneously with Texas a free state was ad
mitted into the union ; but whilst Wisconsin was but
a :single state, Texas was an enormous territorT,
capable of being yet carved into three or four states.
The free states complained that they were not suffi-
ciently compensated for the gain that slavery had
made west of the Sabine. The territory, which
formed the raw material of new states in the north,
had become exhausted, the admission of Wisconsin
compt till the belt of states, which now line
the Mississippi on its west bank, from its
sources to the Gulf. The territory which lay
between that belt and the Rocky Mountains, and north
of the slavery line, was vast, but it was in great part
a deseit,in no part of which wags. new state likely to
arise for a century to come. But Texas was rapidly
filling with people every day, and what remained as a
set off to the new states into which it would be di-
vided ? The abolitionists were furious under these
circumstances at the proposal to annex Texas as
a slave state to the Union. They submitted, how-
ever, but not until they were pacified by the promise
that they should have Oregon. This is the secret of
the rabid manner in which the late JOHN QUINCEY
ADAMS, the chief of the abolitionists, advocated the
American claim to that territory, it being sufficiently
large, if acquired in tato, to make two free states at
least. The portion of it which America now holds
will in due time make one large state.
This again postponed the question for a time, when
the Mexican war broke out. Every one foresaw that
that war would terminate, as it has done, with at
least a large acquisition of territory by the United
States. As that territory lay contiguous to the slave
states, and almost entirely within the slave latitudes,
it required no great degree of foresight to see the in-
timate bearing which the issue of the war would have
upon the question of slavery. The.evei.it hail realised
the anticipations that were formed of it. The vast
region of California—the fine and
the hilly province of
of
New Mexico, and a great part of department
thin the American
Tamaulipas, are now ieeloded wi
line. The future deathly of-this territorial acquisition
will be the test by which the stability of the union is
to be tried.
Observe the position of parties with respect to it.
As regards the institutions of the south, it is of vital
importance that the new territory should not be free.