fact is here in question, before which all purely human forces fall to
the ground. If such prodigious Christian efforts were needed to give the
victory to Wilberforce, what will be required in the heart of a country
where slavery is not exiled to distant colonies, and where it has
acquired formidable proportions with years. There are easy abolitions,
which are wrought in some sort of themselves, and which seem the natural
corollary of a political revolution; as, for instance, that which
occurred forty years ago in the Spanish republics. Bolivar, Quiroga, and
the other leaders, needed the support of all classes of the population
in their struggle against Spain; they adopted the expedient of
suppressing slavery. In taking this resolution, they accomplished a
most honorable deed, but they made little change in the condition of the
country, for large planting was rare, and both the blacks and the whites
were few in numbers, less numerous, indeed, than the Indians and the
half breeds.

If political reasons then sufficed, it is evident that they are far from
sufficing to-day: we must seek elsewhere for the explanation of the
movement which, a long time wavering and suppressed, has just manifested
its irresistible power in the United States. We have recognized in it
the hand of the Gospel; and this is no indifferent matter, for if the
Gospel had no part in it, such a movement would end in destruction.

The responsibility of Christians will be great in America; they can do
much for the favorable solution of a problem which menaces the future of
their country, and overshadows that of humanity. The mode of
pacification here is, to declare themselves; the pretensions of the
South, its fatal progress, the extreme peril to which but lately it
exposed the Confederation, are due much more than is imagined to the
deplorable hesitation of the religious societies and the churches. If it