seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness," but this will be a new covenant.—Should the other party prove successful, it may conquer the territory, exterminate its inhabitants, change all the institutions of the seceding States, nay, do whatever else it lists, and which is possible; for who shall give law to conquest?
But it cannot revive the old Covenant of Union. That is gone forever, and can no more be recalled than yesterday.
If the Victor, in his clemency, chooses to spare the lives of his conquered enemies, to permit them to enjoy their former religion, and laws, and civil institutions, nay, to occupy the conquered country still, he may win the thanks of the vanquished, and perhaps beget in them a sense of gratitude towards the generous chief who has been thus forbearing and kind to a fallen foe. But let none mistake the character of the sentiment so produced. It is loyalty not patriotism; and let those beware of the loyalty of the grateful Mameluke, who may wish thereafter to harm his kind conqueror.
A subdued people have ever been the great agents in subduing others.
Extinguish any one, even the smallest of these now sovereign States, and rely upon it, many others will soon share their fate. A majority may subdue a minority, probably. They can only do so however, by means of force, which must be guided by a man; and if their chief is prudent, the subdued minority will as certainly unite to make him a military despot, as the people of Rome proclaimed the power of a Dictator to escape from the thraldom of an overbearing and selfish Senate.
Will the Victors seek to avert this consequence, by proposing to admit the conquered State into their Union again? She must come if they say so, but the Union thereupon becomes, to all intents and purposes, a new covenant. The rights of the conquered State are then derived to her, under the gracious gift of her conquerors, and not from her own free and sovereign will.
The old Covenant of Union made and sustained by equal and independent States, gives place to one of a very different character, in which there can be no mutual confidence, because it rests no longer upon mutual consent. Many generations must pass away, before any subdued people ought to be trusted as a component part of the Union by which they have been subdued. A
