TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END. THIS American civil war, then,—this awful expenditure of blood, and treasure, and energy—this mortgage placed on the wealth of the present, and on all the hopes of' the future—is not to be without a result. It has cleared the path of a principle, and abolitionism, only one year since reviled and degraded, and living, as it were, under sentence of death, without a resource save its conscience, or an ally save the God who made man, and not merely the whites, has reached the steps of the throne. On the 6th of March, a year and three days from the decree which enfranchised the last European slave, the American President announced that the policy of the Federal Government was one of emancipa- tion. That is the clear meaning of the Message received on Thursday, let its motive be what it may. We are by no means prepared to assert that the latter is exceedingly grand. Mr. Lincoln is a lawyer and a politician, and legal training, poli- tical fears, and a general want of culture, combine to prevent him from accepting the dim notions of abstract right which often crop out in his speeches, as principles of statesmanlike action. That weakness, however, does not alter the effect of his proposal, or modify the broad fact that, in spite of South- ern hostility and democratic opinion, of General McClellan's menaces and the threats of the border slaveowners, the ruling chiefs of the Union have at last made up their minds that the extinction of slavery is their first political need. The secret dread entertained by the friends of freedom, that the North would purchase the Border States by new guarantees for slavery, is finally at an end. If the President's message means anything, it means that the Border States are invited to declare themselves free, to accept compensation from Federal funds for their slaves, and thus to render their union with the South as an independent Republic a hopeless im- possibility. The proposal as a measure of abolition may be pronounced in itself timid, partial, and unsatisfactory. It leaves the slaves of the South still in bondage, and admits the right even of the Border States to retain the institution so long as a majority please. • Above all, it proposes enfran- chisement as a political measure, and not as a return to the right, as a national advantage and not as a national with- drawal from sin. Nevertheless it implies that the union is henceforth to be free, that slavery is to end, slowly or quickly as it may be, but still to end, that no compromise involving extension will be so much as discussed. It is a mighty step in advance, one 'for which the American Go- vernment, surrounded as it is by almost insuperable difficul- ties, deserves, and will, we believe, receive the utmost credit in England, a credit none the less cordial, because the measure has been proposed, not as a war manoeuvre, not in a spirit of vengeance, but in the hour of victory when statesmen ask moderation.

The moral gain is immense, and the more we consider the plan as a mere device of a politician, the more will its saga- city be apparent. It is an acceptable bid, one which the Border States may be ready to accept, and which it is within the power of the Federal Government to fulfil. The utmost extent of the offer is to purchase a million slaves. last census there were in

Slaves.

By the

Delaware .

2,290

Maryland . • 90,368 • Kentucky . • 210,981

Missouri • 87,422

Tennessee • • 239,459

Texas . • 58,161

Virginia . • 472,528

1,159,189

Ten per cent. of these slaves at least will be carried South by their owners, either from political feeling or a determina- tion not to give up their authority, and a million may fairly be taken as the ultimate number to be redeemed. The sum required, therefore, is really, as Mr. Lincoln says, far within the "current expenditure of the war." It has been the custom in this country to assume the cost of compensation as if every slave were an able-bodied labourer ; but no one knows more painfully than their owners how far is this from the fact. The women and children, the old, the sick, and the useless, must all be taken into the account, and the Committee which reports on the slaves of Columbia assumes 250 dollars as a fair price per head. That sum is below the truth ; but taking 800 dollars for the able-bodied man, the same for the woman who lives with him—wife is a word inapplicable to a slave—and 120 dollars for each of his three children, we have an average price of 400 dollars a head, or a total expenditure of eighty millions sterling—nine months' cost of the war. This sum, moreover, would be spread over a series of years. It is more than probable that only the children would be pur- chased, and that, as in New Jersey, the adults would be left to live and die with their masters, protected only from cruelty by the growth of a public opinion ex- empt from' demoralization \ To the great owners the offer involves neither poverty nor loss of position. The great planter whose 500 slaves are now an incessant anxiety, would, in accepting it, keep his lands, now valueless, and re- ceive 40,0001. with whichto work them to the profit they do not at present yield. Land long since injured by wasteful cul- ture would begin to recover its price, and the lapse of a gene- ration would probably find an estate worth double its market value plus the slaves now hutted upon it. A sharp and stern law against squatting, to which there is no manner of ob- jection, would make theprocess even easier, for by com- pelling the slaves to pay rent it would at once restore value to land. There remains the prejudice of the owner, the in- born, ingrained feeling that slavery is natural, that life with- out absolute power has lost its charm. That sentiment doubtless is strong, but its answer is stronger yet. " If," says Mr. Lincoln, with a frown which all his caution cannot conceal, " if resistance continues, war must con- tinue also, and it is impossible to foresee all the inci- dents which may follow it. Such means as may seem indispensable, or may obviously promise great efficiency towards ending the struggle, must and will come." In other words, emancipation, with large compensation, or emancipation by force, those are now the alternatives, and the menace is none the less weighty because the Federal troops are masters of all the Border States except Virginia. The stoutest slaveowner may waver when the freedom he dreads is inevitable, and he is only asked to receive a reward for the consent he cannot refuse. On the other hand, the Union gains advantages worth their price. Setting aside for the moment the moral gain, the extinction of their last source of weakness, the sympathy they will at once elicit in Europe, and even the incalculable aid which a great idea like freedom brings to soldiery in the field, the Federalists gain at a stroke what might be worth years of war. The State which accepts the offer becomes at once a political friend, returns at once to the Union from which slavery alone has divided it, and, whatever its ultimate course, can never again commence a negotiation with slaveowners. It is finally detached from the South, and to have suggested a course which is possible, which is not oppressive, which, pro tont°, terminates slavery, and which may make the Border States hearty allies of the Union, is for Mr. Lincoln a triumph of political skill.

On one point alone is the President's meaning doubtful. He says that the loss of the Border States " substantially ends the rebellion," a sentence which may have two mean- ings. Either be hopes that the South, aware that it cannot standalone, and that the Border is irrevocably lost, will sur- render at discretion, or he means to make peace, dictating, with the new strength of the North, the terms of pacification. The former seems to us the more probable idea, and, if so, it is far too sanguine. The South must be beaten at home before it will yield to a Government in which its last chance of influence has been finally rent away. With the Border States once enfranchised the South would not be quite one to three, and, as the planters very well know, wherever slavery- is not supreme slavery sooner or later is doomed. But Mr. Lincoln may also mean the second solution, a South in- dependent indeed, and occupying all the Gulf, but subordi- nate to the Federal power, unable to menace or fight, with no chance of conquering Mexico, with no prospect of acquiring new lands, and as its soil wears out with an almost resistless temptation to cast off its ancient burden, and re-enter the Union, free. Either alternative is within the scope of a wise diplomacy, and to have rendered such issues possible, by a plan not based upon force, is a feat which will almost tempt Englishmen to believe that the head of the Federal Govern- ment has a right to the name of statesman.