The Tribune has an article on secession of which the substance is contained in the following extract:

“We fear that Southern madness may precipitate a bloody collision that all must deplore. But if ever ‘seven or eight States’ send agents to Washington to say, ‘We want to get out of the Union,’ we shall feel constrained by our devotion to Human Liberty to say, Let them go! And we do not see how we could take the other side without coming in direct conflict with those Rights of Man which we hold paramount to all political arrangements, however convenient and advantageous.”

This is simply a surrender of everything like Government, — a confession that our whole political fabric is a gigantic sham. Seven or eight States have no more right to rebel against the Federal Government than has any one of them. And no State has any more right to secede from the Union, than New-York City has to secede from the State of New-York. The same regard for the “Rights of Man” which sanctions one would sanction the other. The Tribune may dismiss the case by styling this “running the principle into the ground,” but that does not answer the argument. If South Carolina may rightfully secede, we should like the Tribune to tell us why New-York City may not do likewise. The “rights of man” are just as sacred here as at the South. The “right of self-government” is just as absolute in New-York as in South Carolina. Every suggestion the Tribune makes in favor of letting a Southern State go out of the Union, has precisely the same weight, and is just as conclusive in favor of letting New-York City secede from the State and set up an independent government for herself.

The truth is, government becomes impossible on the Tribune’s basis. Why should any man be hung for murder, or imprisoned for theft, or punished in any way for any violation of law, — if the Tribune’s theory that the “rights of man are paramount to all political arrangements, however convenient and advantageous,” is to be thus made the shield for any rebellion against the constituted authorities? The theory is not true in any such sense. The rights of man are sacred beyond all doubt; but our Constitution provides fully for their protection. If South Carolina or any other State has suffered any infringement of their rights, they can appeal to that tribunal which they have themselves created, and by whose decisions they have covenanted to abide. If this appeal fails, then there remains to them the right of revolution, — but that from the very nature of the case is a hostile right — a right which can only be asserted by force, and which no. Government on the face of the earth can ever be expected to concede. The assertion of this right in the Declaration of Independence was not by way of appeal to the British Government for peaceable release from its authority, but was urged as a justification of our resort to arms. South Carolina can, if she pleases, urge the same right in support of her appeal to revolution, — and it will be entitled to just as much weight in the forum of nations as the intrinsic merits of her cause, and the strength of her arms, may give it. But it is utterly worthless and out of place as the basis of a claim for peaceable secession.

The Tribune does not seem in the least to realize the fact that the secession of a State is a disruption of the Confederacy — an abolition of the Constitution — a destruction of the Government. We have as a nation contracted debts, entered into treaty obligations, assumed duties of various kinds towards other nations. By what right can one State or ten States repudiate their share of these engagements? What possible shadow of warrant have they in morals or in national law, for throwing burdens which rest upon them, in common with others, upon the shoulders of their associates? Who has power to release them from these obligations except the great body of those who were parties to them? The whole doctrine of peaceable secession is a delusion and a snare. If it has any foundation whatever, then we have no Government. We have only the mere skeleton — the outline and pretence of a Government. The very idea of government involves the power to govern — the force essential to the execution of its decrees — and the right to use that force whenever the bad faith of any of the parties shall render such a resort necessary. Upon any other theory a Government is no better than a mass meeting. It would have no more authority, no more credit, no more power to make laws and execute them, than a chance gathering of individuals.

The introduction of States into the question does not change its character. The old Confederation dealt with the States only. When it wanted money it called on States to pay it, — and if the State refused the Government was without remedy. It was this very feature of the old Confederation which led to its destruction. It was abolished because it dealt only with States, and because it left to each State the power of virtual secession. A “more perfect Union” was felt to be necessary, — one which should have power to enforce its requisitions either with the will, or against the will, of the separate States. And therefore it was that our present Constitution dealt with individuals only. Its laws are for them. Its obligations are for them. It has nothing to do with States except to forbid them, in the most peremptory manner, from passing any law which shall nullify or defeat the operation of the law of Congress.

This doctrine of peaceable secession, — and the fact that it is urged by portions of the people at the North, does more than anything else to encourage the South in their present attitude of hostility to the Federal Government. We do not believe it is the belief of any considerable portion of the people of the Northern or the Western States, nor even of the Southern States themselves; and if President BUCHANAN had done his duty, and had given the South, from the very outset, to understand that no such doctrine would be accepted or tolerated by the General Government, and taken steps accordingly, the whole disunion movement would have ended by this time. The people have no such conception of the nature of this Government as such a doctrine implies. They believe it to be an actual Government, — clothed with all the powers and all the authority essential to the enforcement of its laws, and bound, at all hazards and to the last extremity, to defend itself against destruction from whatever quarter it may be threatened. And this is the theory on which they are prepared to act.

Source: New York Times, editorial, “Peaceable Secession,” December 18, 1860.