The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-05 00:00:00

A YANKEE'S" I'REDIC7ION.

The Spectator last Saturday published a letter
from its American correspondent, "A Yankee,''
who, we regret, has not lately spoken from that
pulpit—to borrow a phrase of his own. We pre-
sume "A Yankee" was annoyed with the comments
of the Spectator on his former letters. Indeed there
was internal evidence before he ceased to write that
he was boiling up into a state of indignation.
The Spectator's ignorance of the value of States'
Rights has attracted him again into its columns,
and the importance it attaches to his commu-
nications is clear from the dignity it accords
of " Special" Correspondent. It does not re-
quire the critical acumen of the spectator to
discover how ab!c a writer he is, and as a tra-
velled, highly caltivated,—an genuine Yankee Li,:
letters carry weight. In substance he says that the
Republicans will be defeated in the Presilential
election unless GRANI''S popularity can carry them
to a succss, because their platform infringes on
States' Rights. The one idea which pervades
American society alike in Massachusetts and in
Ohio, in the Carolinas and in Louisiana, is States'
Rights—the sovereignty of the State in a municipal
capacity in contradistinction to the sovereignty
of the Federal Government in a national capa-
city. Were the angel GABRIEL nominated on
a platform destructive of States' Rights be
would have no chance of an election, nor even the
" Fallen Angel," for whom it is said " the Demo-
crats would vote to a man if he received a regular
nomination," and declaring the Chicago platform
to encroach on States' Rights, he believes in a Re-
publican defeat. Glancing over the articles of
their platform, we find the first declares it to be the
duty of the Government to sustain the new Consti-
tutions of the Reconstructed States, which secure
equal political and civil rights to all, while the
second maintains the guarantee of Congress of
equal suffrage to every loyal man in the South.
So jealous are the people in preserving States'
Rights that they consider even this an infringe-
ment, the Reconstruction laws being a direct in-
fraction, which will turn thousands who fought
to maintain the Union in support of the Demo-
crats who uphold these privileges. The war
settled two questions in the negative—Whether the
South was justified in the invasion of States' Rights
by extending their " domestic institution " into
States where the people rejected it ; and whether
the Southern States, failing in that, had the right
to secede. The North fought for States' Rights as
involved in the first question, the South as involved in
the second question. But " A Yankee " shows how
mistaken is the impression in England that the South
strove to maintain States' Rights in their integrity
against a usurping majority of the North. A
Federal Government of Sovereign States is that under
which the citizens have hitherto lived, and that they
intend to maintain. A central Sovereignty might
be a better form of Government ; bat it is not, and
never has been, the Government of the United
States, and, what is more, whNher GRANT or SEY-
MOUR be elected, it never will be, at least while the
people are in their present mood. States' Rights
alone preserve the Republic from the despotism of a
majority, under whose rule the minority would have
no rights the majority were bound to respect. To
intrench on States' Rights is to introduce a total
change in the Government, equally obnoxious to
the New Englander and to the Southerner, the
Western man and the Californian. The platform,
then, which in the slightest degree proposes to
invade rights so jealously guarded, is opposed to
the opinions of the citizens, and will lead to the
defeat of the party putting down such a plank.
We grant the strong feeling in favour of States'
Rights ; we admit that a change in the municipal
Sovereignty of the States would revolutionize the
Republic; and we allow that the interference of
Congress in the domestic affairs of the Southern
States is in a high degree objectionable. But the
circumstances are peculiar, the necessity over-
whelming, for how otherwise could the objects of
the war be secured ? This question is always
evaded by the men who condemn the action of
k Congress. If the Southern States insisted on ex-
tending the " domestic instituition" into States
which rejected it; to make the North a hunting
ground for slave-catchers, and failing that fon ;ht
for secession, the North
.has a right to introduce

the Free-soil law of their States into the South.
This the Southerners do not dispute ; at heist they
bow to the necessity and accept it. But they main-
tain that there the power of the conquering North
should cease, and that they should leave the &egro
in the South in the same position he holds in the
North,•where he is a free man, but not a citizen.
The moderate Republican, in reply, says—Yes :
could the position of the Negro be secured in the
South as in the North under the Northeca system.
1.13 at herein the difficulty. Sum-ging All dig-