But the hope is that their rapacity may check
their ferocity. As to any high purpose about the war - it is moonshine.
It is a war for supremacy and to find out which brother shall rule the
house and run away with the dying old man's goods. [Footnote: The
following Resolution passed the United States House of Representatives,
February 11, 1861, by a nearly unanimous vote: -
"Resolved - That neither the Federal Government, nor the people
or Government of the non-slaveholding States, have a purpose or a
constitutional right to legislate upon or interfere with slavery in any
of the States of the Union.
"Resolved - That those persons in the North who do not subscribe
to the foregoing proposition, are too insignificant in numbers and
influence to excite the serious attention and alarm of any portion of
the people of the Republic; and that the increase of their numbers and
influence does not keep pace with the increase of the aggregate
population of the Union." ] I am spending to-day with Reynolds, and
dine to-night with Brydges. Reynolds has a good house, but he complains
of his high rent, as his house was taken in the piping times of 1858.
Now rents are down one-half, and he could get as good a house for
100l a year, whereas he pays 200l In 1857 it was - to use
a vile Yankee phrase, the literal meaning of which no one can explain,
but the illustrative meaning of which is inflation - "High Felluting" -
or, as the Yankees write it, "Hi Falutin" - now everything is sobered,
and in many places depressed:
