Miscellaneous Back Matter [pp. 472A-RD06]

THE PRESENT AND TIHE FUTURE.
POLITICAL POLICY OF THE CONFEDERACY.
519
Throughout the bounds of the Confederacy, with its acquisitions wherever they may be, there must be established and protected the institution of domestic slavery. The world must be
convinced of the great truth that slavery in the African race,
as now held and regulated in the Confederacy, is in accordance
with the model of divine government, and in fulfilment of the
great purposes of God in his creative designs. That it is an
unqualified blessing to the negro who is enslaved, and has unquestionably proven itself to be a general blessing to mankind
by supplying with remunerative labor, bread and raimenlt,
year after year, to millions and millions of laboring whites,
more enslaved than our slaves, and actually saving them from
nakedness and starvation.
With all nations and all Governments and people, the policy
of the Confederacy should be PEACE. We can have no interest
or desire of interfering with the affairs of other Governments
and people, or of entering into entangling alliances with them,
while at the same time we ought not to permit, with impunity,
any interference with the rights and concerns of our own. A
free and fiiendly interchange of reciprocal commercial and
national intercourse with all Governments and peoples, with
such guards as may be absolutely necessary for our own welfare, safety and security, seem to cover the main ground desirable as to our foreign policy. The very name of' peace brings
order and harmony in its train.
"Though source and soul of social life;
Beneath whose calm, inspiring influence
Science his view enlarges, Art refines,
And swelling commerce opens all her ports."
We are decidedly in favor, and would earnestly urge a remodeling of the constitution'after the Confederacy shall fully
embrace the slave States, as it is but just that all these States
should participate in the formation of their Government. The
grand idea of' their distinctive sovereignty must be preserved
as the palladium of the people's liberties. There are very
strong objections to some of the features of the present constitution, which it is needless now to refer to. It must be remembered that we have not to fix up a constitution for a day or a
year, but we have devolving upon us the great and responsible
duty of devising and instituting a form of government looking
to a long future, or at least for securing the liberty and welfare
of our posterity. itow important, then, at the outset, to avoid
all false steps that may tend to abridge popular government,
or place the ruling power in the hands of a few.
There is no principle, we think, which should hold a more
prominent and lasting position in the government of the Confederacy than that which is embraced in the idea that South
-f
If