TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 161 



be formed of nine against one, 210 of four against six ; in all 511 war combinations. 

 Then if we introduce the element of neutrality, the combinations are still further 

 multiplied ; and there remains the sepai-ate probability of each alliance. After all 

 the resources of statistics are exhausted, enough is left to task the intellect of the 

 most sagacious minister. We are beyond the age of Government by instinct; and 

 the political questions of the day in England demand new light from science. In 

 the decision of the course to pursue in all the questions of the balance of power — 

 of peace and war — the country has the wisdom of experienced ministers like Lord 

 Palmerston and Lord Derbj^ to rely upon ; but the Queen's Ministers know the 

 difficulties of the problem, and will appreciate the value of the facts which they 

 require from statistics — and which the Houses of Parliament require — to aid them 

 in deciding questions of international policy. In steering the vessel of the State 

 over the ocean our captains cannot now entirely rely upon their stars ; they must 

 consult their "Nautical Almanack." 



Besides the problem of equilibrium, there remain others of equal difficulty. 

 Aristotle, Comte, and other thoughtful theorists, looked with favour on the orga- 

 nization of mankind in small States. But while small States often exhibit great 

 intellectual activity, and in Judea, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Hollaud, Frankfort, 

 Weimar, Wiirtemberg, and elsewhere, have nurtured men of transcendent genius, 

 they exist now by sufferance ; they exert little direct influence on the political 

 affairs of mankind. Property is less secure in these dominions than it is in large 

 States ; and their defence is more difficult, and in proportion much more expen- 

 sive. Thus, to say nothing of smaller States, Bavaria, to keep the same army in 

 the field as Prussia, must draw four times as deeply on the resources of her people. 

 Sweet are the charms of small Courts and local Government ; yet the people of 

 small States are, as in Italy, yielding by degrees to the soft compulsion of powerfid 

 neighbours ; and the great continental powers, as their population increases, evince 

 a passion for the sea, to which the small States upon the coasts may not for ever 

 ofter an efiectual barrier. Still a valiant nation in hearty cohesion, feeble in aggres- 

 sion, cannot be subjugated by a nation of four or perhaps ten times its magnitude ; 

 as was seen in the cases of Greece and Persia, of Prussia imder Frederick — who 

 with 5 millions of people fought 100 millions — in Austria and Switzerland, Spain 

 and the Netherlands, England and America. The population of England was 

 about 10,530,000, and that of the whites in the States 2,614,000, holding half 

 a million slaves, in the war when the colonists resisted brave British armies, 

 until the intervention of France and other Em'opean powers closed the unavailing 

 contest. 



In spoiling Poland three great powers participated ; and Hungary in the war of 

 1848 was only recovered by Austria with the aid of Russia. Each of the great 

 powers of Europe has fought — and is able to defend its existence for a time against 

 — Europe in coalition, so long as the hearts of the people are loyal. 



The solution of the problem — can 19 Free States conquer 15 Slave States, can 

 19 millions of people subjugate 8 millions of freemen holding 4 million slaves ? — 

 might have prevented a desolating war. And statistics supplies but one solution. 



The census was taken in the United States in 1790, eleven years before the first 

 English census ; and the last report by Mr. Kennedy is one of the fullest of which 

 statistics can boast. From this it appears that the 697,897 slaves of 1790 had 

 midtiplied so rapidly, that they amoimted to 3,95.3,760 in 1860 ; and this increase 

 proves that the physical condition of the slaves and thek health are, as the 

 Southerners tell us, good in a warm climate. They cannot possibly, in the aggre- 

 gate, like the blacks in Cuba, be worked to death by the masters of English blood, 

 and their conduct during the war confirms this inference. The present Southerners 

 did not, as Sir George Lewis remarks of the Greeks, invent slaveiy; they inherited 

 it under their laws, and are in the same uneasy situation as masters woidd be here, 

 who had paid their servants wages for life in advance. With the growth of popu- 

 lation, the equitable abolition of slavery in America, like the abolition of serfdom 

 in Europe, is only a question of time, to be worked out in peace as the prosperity 

 of the South increases ; yet the institution of slavery is so much at variance with 

 the principles of liberty and of the American constitution, that its speedy ex- 

 tinction is a sacred aspiration in the North, and is shared in England. The pas- 



1864. 11 



