The Press. — 1856-11-01 (London, England)

NOVEMBER 1, 1856.  of controversy. It is not so much the violence of rival parties as the subject of their quarrel which lead us to this opinion. In all free countries the discussion of questions in which the whole body of the people are interested is sure to be attended by a degree of heat which naturally seems to the statesmen of despotic Governments the forerunner of revolution. In America especially, where the fullest freedom of opinion is as it were the differentia of their constitution, much turbulence and disorder may occur without justifying us in predicting consequences of so much magnitude. But slavery is, in the language of the Americans themselves, " a peculiar institution " and one of its historical peculiarities is this that all empires in which it has existed have found in its rapid growth the most fatal impediment both to moral and material progress. We are necessarily compelled to take our instances from times antecedent to Christianity. But it so happens that there is in some respects a most remarkable resemblance between the Italian provinces of the second century before CHRIST, and the slave States of America at the present day. We have all read how the youthful TIBERIUS GRACCHUS was first incited to the agitation of those measures which modern scholars prove to have been ise and even conservative, by the spectacle of the vast solitudes which met his eye as he journeyed through Etruria on his way to Spain. The substitution of slave labour for free by the Roman nobility, by depriving the poorer classes of all means of saving money and acquiring land for themselves had gradually exterminated the old Italian yeomanry. Slowly and surely a corresponding change ensued in the composition of the Imperial armies. The old patriotic feeling began to decay, and though their consummate military organisation enabled the Romans to overcome the barbarian hordes of Gaul and Asia, yet the youthful vigour which had first made them masters of Italy and conquerors of Carthage was no longer discernable. Nor is the moral corruption in which the last years of the republic were steeped wholly unassignable to the same cause. The provincial middle class, usually admitted to be in all countries the surest support of national virtue, was destroyed. A freeman of the lower orders was virtually excluded from a,gri.cultural employment; and in Italy there had hitherto been but two modes of living—by the sword or by the plough. When these resources failed it was necessary to invent a third. Rome accordingly was crowded by ht.rdes of adventurers, whom necessity rendered unscrupulous, and who subsisted by the sale of their votes, and the favour of some powerful patron, whose bidding they were bound to perform regardless of either means or end. Thus was rendered possible the recurrence of such scenes as have in modern times been usually the product only of periods of recognised anarchy. A political opponent was mobbed and murdered, or a great criminal screened from justice, by the agency of these bands of ruffians. Bribery was reduced to a regular system, and its administration assumed the form of a profession. The efforts of the wisest and best of the citizens were unable to cope with this monster evil. One after another perished in the attempt, till liberty was finally trodden under foot by Auciesztis, and Roman virtue became a theme for schoolboys. Exact historic parallels are rare. But few will deny that the above description is in some important features, if not a resemblance to the condition of the Southern States, at least near enough to be a warning. One great source of the enmity felt towards them by the Northcrns is the impossibility of obtaining land there. They see some of the most fertile provinces in the Union monopolised by a few men, who might be equally rich upon smaller estates were the ground cultivated by freemen. The slave° wners, on the other hand, have come to regard the question as one of vested rights, and being a united body, generally speaking of higher education and refinement than their opponents, it is not likely they will ever submit to argument. Had the question admitted of a calm and rational solution, surely some of the many efforts in that direction must have been at all events