The Express.
London, England, 1861-01-08 00:00:00

LONDOV, YI"K.4DAY, J.t N. 8.

X • filets an too notorious, on inferences too
clear, for the perverting power of party pre-
judice. Tlo• lezty of resistance to the further
"easiesseiou of popular rights amongst us, are try-
Mg just now to turn to account the differences
that threaten to divide the hitherto United States
of America. The superionty of a strong central
gokerninesit is alintrated, we are told, by the ex-
postulatory moderation of President litNllll3ll2l in
dealing with the precipitate and peseimisie comae
taken by South Carolina ; and the greater sta-
bility of aristocratic institutions over dime of •
democratic character is shown by the reekleemens
with which Louisiana, 4:corgia, and %milli talk
of following her example. The Southern States,
we are assured, are all democracies in the same
maw as those of New Englund, yet " the North,"
we are told, "is for freedom, while the South is
" for slavery ; and the North is for freedom of
" discussion, while the South represses freedom of
" discussion with the tar-brush and the pine fag-
" gut ; yet both possess almost exactly similar
" institutions, with this enormous divergence in
" theory and practice." It is hardly possible for
words to convey misconceptions more complete or

mi,-statenwuta more grave than those into which
our retrograde contemporary has fallen. It is
neither true in point of form that the Southern
and Northern States are "exactly similar" in
their political institutions, or "almost exactly
" similar," or " similar" at all. They are, in•
deed, both termed Republic% as were Venice and
tienos, England under CROMWELL, and Holland
under be ; but every well-taught schoolboy
knows that, except in name, there was no identity,
or approach to identity, between any two of these.
As well might it be said that the institutions of
England were "almost exactly similar" to those of
Russia because both empires are hereditary, and
because the spiritual headship of the Church is
combined in both with the civil and military him&
ship of the State.

But it is not merely in point of form that it is
wholly incorrect to call South Carolina and MallMlL-
chusetta, Virginia and Vermont, democracies of
similar constitution, but it is simply futile to
classify them together for any political purpose or
social meaning. Their origin was different, their
history has been still more different, and their actual
condition as regards rights, liberties, and franchises,
is about as different in all practical points as can be
well conceived. The democracies of New England
were founded by exiles for "sole liberty," who
remembered with grief and grudge how they had
been driven by the lordly and prelatical instru-
ments of tyranny from the land of their fathers;
and the new States which have one by one risen
up in the north western prairies have instinctively
copied the model of the republican hives from
which they have swarmed. Many subordinate
peculiarities characterise the commonwealths
founded by the Puritans, and those which have
gradually drawn their physical and moral life
therefrom. But in the main they are one and all
true to the original type, and one and all rest
upon the same foundation, namely, the indefeasible
right of every man who contributes by his industry
to sustain the State, and who is loyal to its inte-
rest', to have a voice in the making of its laws
and the imposition of its taxes. The electoral
franchise in New Hampshire may not be in all
respects identical with that in Connecticut ; in
Michigan it may be km jealously circumscribed
than in Massachnsette ; and in Illinois certain
conditions may never have been known which still
prevail in PerinsylveAis. But, substantially, each
and all of the communities that have recently re-
corded their votes in favour of Mr. L1%c0t.3 are
democratically constituted and democratically
governed. But neither Virginia nor the Caro-
linas, which may be termed the original
States of the South, were founded on these
principles. When RsLEIUN devised, and Bscox
matured, the scheme of a plantation which should
hold the Spaniards in check, and establish English
colonies on the southern seaboard of the great
vacant continent, their notion was to transplant
beyond the ocean carefully chosen and nicely pro.
portioned specimens of the society in which they
lived and moved at home. Large estates were
given in fee simple to certain noblemen and gen-
tlemen who stood well at Court ; and the whole
mechanism of entails and feudal rights and rever-
sions was carefully imitated. A Church establish-
ment was rigorously imposed upon tie Want
colony ; and, as far as it was deemed poseible, the
modes and methods of rule which were recognised
in England in the days of JAW= I. WIN', dogma-
tically enjoined upon the Company of Adventurers
who were tempted to freight their ships with emi-
grants to the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Through
all the subsequent changes of their struggling
growth to maturity during the seventeenth cen-
tury the sane predominant ideas are traceable in
the minds of the Government at home. In the
curious history of the settlement of the oniony
Published by Bevi.acev, in 170, it is noted with
peculiar emphasis that Virginia was the last de-

petidemy of England winch acknowledged the rule
of the Commonwealth, end the bat which offered
to lend its aid to Mulct the restoration of the
MTVARTs without emiditions. In his admirable
work on the ecil•Jnization of North America, Mr.
BAN, sort has dcpietcd with more than his ordi-
nary skill ti,e solemn fooleries of constitution-
esongering into which another philosopher, Lcke,
was betrayed, w hen, like Hsi he lent his pen to
the elaboration of mimic institutionson the inonar•
chic and aristocratic model of England for the
goveniment of youthful communities in America.
The Carolinas wen, the unhappy objects of his
misplaced zeal for transatlantic transcription ; and

it was under the factitious ordinances thus forced
upon the's, that the people of these provinces grew
and When a common sense of pro-1
vincial wrong combined the Thirteen Colonies in
1774 ritainat the fiscal injustice of Groitos 111.
and bus Ministers, it was felt by all their more le-
fleet; ng leaders that the difficulties in the way of
holding them together would be almost insur-
e& mutable, from the wide divergence of their habits,
w.anners, and ideas. Yoder oligarchic institations

the settlers in the South had never thriven or in-
named as their democratic brethren had done in
leas favoured latitudes. Virginia, Carolina, and
Georgia welled for the tillage of their fields on
slaves imported from Africa ; while a community
of race, of speech, of religion, and of the iights
of citizenship existed among all make of
I men in New England. It was not with-
out difficulty that Jsr ransom was able
to persuade his planter friends in Virginia
to adopt even amongst themselves repub-
lican forms and customs ; but neither he nor any
other Southern statesman dreamed of conferring
electoral or any other rights of citizenship on the
bulk of the population. The Southern States
were in his time what they have continued to be
ever since, and what they now are, inexorable
oligarchies, iu which the nom of the people are by
virtue of the taint of colour absolutely excluded
from all recognition in the eye of the law, save in
the sense in which cattle have protection against
wanton cruelty. There is not in Europe any form
of society so entirely and intensely anti-democratic
as that which prevails to the south of 36 degrees
of latitude, and this not merely in spirit and
temper, but in fact and form. To assert that de-
mocracy is a common quantity in the free and
the slave States of America, is to bilk with the
most momentous realities of things. It is just
because democracy is the prevailing law and
abiding rule of the Northern States, that personal
bondage is found to be within their precincts im-
possible ; and it is just because the acquisition of
a democratic suffrage is sternly interdicted in the
houthern States that four millions of human beings
are there retained in predial and domestic slavery.
One hour of democracy in the South would suffice
to settle the question.