HALIFAX, June 8, 1861.

MY DEAR SIR:—In times like these, we feel that all the writing, as all the action, should be on your side. We have nothing to write about, commensurate in interest to what is passing among you.

I see that the North is rather disappointed with the course our Government is adopting, but it has itself to thank for our neutrality[.] It did not treat the Southern secession as rebellion, till the secession movement had grown into a sort of government; and the present quarrel seems rather one for supremacy, than for the interests of liberty. If the South was to say now, 'Take us back, slaves and all—give us the rights to oppress we had before'—the North would consent.

The tariff bill has, of course, caused great disgust in England, and very justly. if a majority can pass a bill for their own supposed interests, which must cause a vast amount of dishonesty, and which is oppressive to a large portion of the States, it gives a color to the plea of the South that they could not be secure of impartiality on any sectional question. The North had expressed its readiness to barter the small concessions towards freedom they had made for the colored race to gain the South back. They could give the poor man's lamb to feast the stranger! but not only do they spare their own flocks and herds, but try to filch some of the said stranger's! They talk as if Union was the thing dearest to their hearts, and at the same time pass a Bill similar in effect to the one which had caused secession in time past. I fancy if the South had seceded on some such principle—if it it had said, the North are protectionists and manufacturers, we are agricultural free traders, and what is the food of the North (commercial imposts) is poison to us—it would not have seemed very absurd to divide the Government, when interests seem so much divided.

I think I sent you an Inquirer—to which I contributed an article, 'Slaveownia'—or else expected you to see it, before the last outbreak happened, when it seemed as if the North was consenting to peaceful secession. If the South was to secede, it seemed natural that it should keep the forts on its own soil.

The rage of the North at the capture of Sum
ter caused some astonishment.

As yet, the war is not undertaken to pro
mote freedom, but to force union, or to terrify
from further disunion; and till we see what
comes of it, as friends of freedom we feel no
intense interest in the success of the pro-slavery North any more than of the South. It
is true the North may hate Southern institu
tions while they are enemies, yet be prepared
to protect them, as before, when peace comes.
In this respect it may be better for the period
of hatred to sinners to continue, till a hatred
of the sin is thoroughly ingrained in the
Northern conscience But I am a peace
loving Abolitionist; and war talk, and the
cruelty of hatred, is as disgusting to me as
pro-slavery talk, and the cruelty of oppression,
and I think each section of the States proud,
hectoring and revengful. The only comfort
is, that the North does contain many thou
sands of true, generous, devoted men and
women, who may do something to elevate and
ennoble this horrid civil war. But fratricide
has few charms for those who are not engaged
in it! and the North, as a community, are
not entitled to claim the function of pure
and righteous ministers of divine vengeance.
In the same army are noble anti-slavery men,
and the worst rowdies, of who our only hope
is, that they can't do much more harm in war,
than they have inflicted in a corrupt peace.

I fear in this hurried scrawl I have not
made myself very intelligible. As for you, I
hope you may rather shed salt than blood—
Never did your country stand more in need of
the true salt of Christian principle.

Ever faithfully yours, R. L. C.