going, that human beings should be burnt alive. The calm and
dispassionate Mr. Olmsted affirms that there has not been a single
year, for many years past, in which this horror is not known to have
been perpetrated in some part or other of the South. And not upon
negroes only; the _Edinburgh Review_, in a recent number, gave the
hideous details of the burning alive of an unfortunate Northern
huckster by Lynch law, on mere suspicion of having aided in the escape
of a slave. What must American slavery be, if deeds like these are
necessary under it?--and if they are not necessary and are yet done,
is not the evidence against slavery still more damning? The South are
in rebellion not for simple slavery; they are in rebellion for the
right of burning human creatures alive.

But we are told, by a strange misapplication of a true principle, that
the South had a _right_ to separate; that their separation ought to
have been consented to, the moment they showed themselves ready to
fight for it; and that the North, in resisting it, are committing the
same error and wrong which England committed in opposing the original
separation of the thirteen colonies. This is carrying the doctrine of
the sacred right of insurrection rather far. It is wonderful how easy
and liberal and complying people can be in other people's concerns.
Because they are willing to surrender their own past, and have no
objection to join in reprobation of their great-grandfathers, they
never put themselves the question what they themselves would do in
circumstances far less trying, under far less pressure of real
national calamity. Would those who profess these ardent revolutionary
principles consent to their being applied to Ireland, or India, or the
Ionian Islands. How have they treated those who did attempt so to
apply them? But the case can dispense with any mere _argumentum ad
hominem_. I am not frightened at the word rebellion. I do not scruple