The Express.
London, England, 1862-09-30 00:00:00

LONDON. TUESDAY EVENING; SEPTEMBER 80, 1862.

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• BOSTON, Sam 16.
•
le the flush of recent success the Secession press
isitbusy in discussing the terms of settlement be-
Anon the combatants. The arrogant claims which
are set up could not for a moment be recognised by
Om North. The fundamental idea on which the
South justifies its movement is the right of woes-
OM When the committee appointed by the au-
thorities of all ,the States which remained in the
Skim previous to the attack on Fort Sumter
det in Washington, a compromise might have
! been patched up out of the old tatters of opinion,
but for this one question of secession. The Virgin&
delegates led off with maintaining the right rof,
each State to secede. In this they were sustainei
by the mambos from the slave States. This was.
real rock on which the parties split. So jealous
• this principle are the Southern politicians that
lessor Brown of Georgia denied the right of the
teal government at Richmond to make a con-
*ption in a State without the consent of the
venter ; or rather he maintained that the act
fiNiolition of State rights. So noir Se-pipers
more loudly than ever demand the admission of this
doctrine not only for the South but as applicable to
the whole Union. Thus the Richmond press says,
if the United Skies want peaoe "upon proper"
terms they can have it. Among these are the re-
cognition of the Southern Confederacy, and the
permission of each State to decide which of the
two central governments it prefers. " This
right must extend to the free as well as
the border slave States, not that any
of the Northern States are wanted in the
Confederacy, but aeon acknowledgment of the right
of secession, for which this war has been waged."
As a bait thrown out to the North-West it is added
that there is no need to proclaim the free navigs.
gation of the Mississippi, for that has been suffi-
ciently declared already. Unless a peace on these
terms is accepted the South will conquer one, and
for this purpose the long proposed and ardently
desired plan of invading the North will be carried
out. Although this is regarded by many as
Southern gasconade, it is certain that the current
of thought among the rebels has powerfully set in
this direction. In the full tide of success the
Richmond papers are indulging in the hope that,
when the fact of invasion is brought home to the
people of the North, the above terms will be ac-
cepted. The manner in which the threatened ad-
vance into Pennsylvania is received does not pro-
mise the fulfilment of the rebel hope. The old
Keystone State is in earnest. The enemy, thun-
dering at its own doors, has roused the whole com-
monwealth. There is no such thing as
drafting, but in fact a great popular up-
rising. Members of Congress, college pro-
fessors, millionaires, with musket in hand,
stand shoulder to shoulder with sturdy mechanics
and burly farmers. On the day the steamer sails
Governor Curtin will have 100,000 men under arms
at Harrisburg. Grant that these are raw and un-
disciplined troops, that they could not meet veteran
forces on anything like equal terms, still they are
nut to be despised, especially when fighting on the
defensive and on their own ground. Moreover, se
M'Clellan is close on the heels of his foe, ere the
latter could reach Harrisburg he would be between
two armies. It has seemed to me doubtful whether
Jackson and Lee even at first seriously designed a
movement of this kind, but the Pennsylvanians
have acted as if they thought so. Possibly the
universal and prompt response of the citizens, and
the number thus rapidly concentrated, have in-
duced the rebel generals to pause ere they start on
so hazardous au undertaking. The present move-
ments of Jackson indicate an intention to fall back,
but it will be a day or two before we shall know
whether this is the real purpose ofethe evacuation
of Frederick.
Another result of the late rebel success has been
an increase of zeal in the defence of the "sacred
institution." There is a class at the North, chiefly
among the abolitionists, who have predicted that
the South would sooner give up slavery than yield
to the Union, and that if they saw their cause
going to wreck they would proclaim liberty to the
slaves, put arms into their hands, and thus add the
material strength of the negroes to the moral sym-
pathy they would get from abroad. But as at pre-
sent there is no such stress of emergency, the thing
is not expected. The Southern press is as rampant
as ever in defence of their "corner-stone," and a
recent article in the Southern Literary Mes-
senger, an influential print at the South,
thus defines an abolitionist : "An aboli-
tionist is any man who does not love
slavery for its own sake as a divine institution ;
who does not worship it as a corner-stone of civil
liberty ; who does not adore it as the only possible
social condition on which a permanent republican
government can be created ; and who does not, in
his inmost soul, desire to see it extended and per-
petuated over the whole earth as a means of human
reformation second only in dignity, importance,
and sacredness, to the Christian religion. He who
does not love African slavery with this love is an
! abolitionist." This, bear in mind, is not a carica-
ture, but the expression of the writer's real con-
viction. However extravagant it may sound,
this pro-slavery fanaticism is growing more
and more into favour throughout the cotton States.
Nothing but the moral protest. of all civilised
nations would prevent this feeling, should there be
an independent Confederacy, from leading to an
imperious demand for the supply of labourers by
! means of the foreign slave trade. Just now it is
for the interest of the leaders at Richmond to
keep silent on this subject, but no one conversant
with opinion at the South for the last few years
need be told of the gradual process of preparing
the public mind for a renewal of the slave trade
which has been going on. The increase of the
wealth of the South depends upon the increase of
its labour. As long as slavery exists and new ter-
ritory is to be settled the call for more slaves is an
imperative necessity. Often eminent politicians have
asked of what need is new territory unless we
have more slaves ? Before the war the demand
for this kind of labour exceeded the supply. The
throwing open of more extended and uncultivated
tracts of land to the sugar and cotton planter
would only raise the demand still higher. Be-
sides, there is the well-known desire of the poor
whites at the South to own slaves. This class,
more than the wealthy planters, have cried out for
' a renewal of the African slave trade. Let the
Englishman who is so eager to see the new go-
vernment at Richmond recognised as an inde-
pendent power picture to himself the bare and
stars waving over the slave ship, and throwing its
1 sanction over this beneficent traffic. Why should