AURORA.

'For Waterloo,' says Victor Hugo, 'was not a battle: it was a change of front of the universe.'

Great events are developed by nearness. "To-day," says Emerson, "is a king in disguise." Probably half the soldiers of Constantine's army regarded their leader's adoption of the Cross as his sign of hope and triumph as of small account. Their pay and rations, their weapons, their officers, were the same as before; the enemy before them, their duty to beat him, were unchanged. What availed a symbol more or less on the imperial banner? Even admit that it indicated the emperor's personal rejection of the old and adoption of the newer faith, what of that? Would not everybody else abide by the religion of his own choice, whatever that might be? Away, then, with all theological babble, which plain people can never half understand! Rome and the emperor for ever! Yet in that despised symbol, announcing that the Empire had become the protector instead of the persecutor of the Christian faith, was the germ of a greater transformation than was wrought by the Deluge.

The Proclamation of Freedom by President Lincoln is doubtless open to criticism. Why did he not declare all slaves emancipated? Why not make such legal manumission operative at once? Why intimate that certain States should (or might) be excepted from its operation? Why not declare the slaves liberated because of the essential, inevitable wrong of holding them in bondage? Why not appeal to God for His blessing on the cause henceforward inseparably identified with that of Right and Liberty? Such questions may be multiplied indefinitely; but to what end? What matters that the Proclamation might or should be different, since we have practical concern only with the Proclamation as it is?

For more than a lifetime, slavery has been accepted and regarded as a national institution. The American in Europe was "perplexed in the extreme" by the questionings and criticisms of humane, intelligent observers, who could not comprehend how a country should contain Four Millions of slaves by the official census, yet not be a slaveholding country. With our capital a slaveholding city; with our fortresses in good part constructed by the labor of slaves; with our flag the chief shelter of the African Slave Trade, and our statute book disgraced by the most arbitrary and inhuman Fugitive Slave Law ever devised, it was a nice operation to prove this no slaveholding country, but only one wherein certain citizens, by virtue of local laws, over which we had no control, were permitted to hold Blacks in slavery. And, when it is notorious that the active partisans of slavery filled every Federal office, even in the nominally free States, and excluded rigorously from office every opponent of the baleful system, it is certain that the shrug of the polite Frenchman who listened to our demonstration that ours, after all, was not a slaveholding country, was an indication of complaisance rather than of conviction. To prove this nothing of the sort, while Brazil was placed at the head of modern slaveholding countries, was to overtax the resources of human sophistry.

The Proclamation is an immense fact. If it were no more than a recognition from the highest quarter of the deadly antagonism between slavery and the Union, it would have inexhaustible significance. The American republic, bleeding at every pore while fighting desperately for life, arraigns slavery as her chief enemy and peril. The truth was long since clear to every candid mind; but truth gains force by recognition. Thousands realize a fact thus proclaimed, who have hitherto ignored and resisted it.

For thirty years, the charge of disloyalty has borne heavily on the American champion of Universal Liberty. True, as to a very few, who could not obtain the assent of their consciences to compacts which bound them to aid the oppressor against his victim, they were made a weapon of offense against all. Abolitionists were execrated and hooted by the mob as champions at once of Negro Equality and of National dissolution.

The times are bravely altered. The partnership between Slavery and Unionism is absolutely dissolved. Like most divorces, this involves a deadly quarrel. Not even the soaring platitudes of George Francis Train can longer evoke cheers for the Union blent with curses on Abolition. In a strictly, sternly real sense, "Liberty and Union" are henceforth "one and inseparable!"

For thirty years, our great seaboard merchants, our shippers, our factors, have given their patronage to pro-slavery journals and their votes to pro-slavery politicians, with intent to preserve the Union and lay the red spectre of civil war. Their recompense is found in the repudiation of the immense debts for merchandise due them from the South, and a gigantic war waged by the Slave Power for the overthrow of the Union. The profits of a lifetime of obsequious pandering to the master crime of our era are swept away at a blow, and the arm that strikes it is that of the monster they have made such sacrifices of conscience and manhood to conciliate. Was ever retribution more signal?

To-day, the American Union, through the official action of its President and Congress, stands distinctly on the side of Liberty for All. Its success in the fearful struggle forced upon it involves the overthrow and extinction of American slavery. The sentiment of nationality, the instinct which impels every people to deprecate and resist the dismemberment and degradation of their country, the impulse of loyalty, are all arrayed against the traitorous "institution" which, after having so long bent the Union to its ends, now seeks its destruction. It once seemed to the majority patriotic to champion slavery; it is now a sacred duty to resist the bloody Moloch unto death.

The very hesitation of the President to take the decisive step gives weight to his ultimate decision. The compromisers have never tired of eulogizing his firmness, his candor, his patience, his clearness of vision, his independence, and his unsectional patriotism. His associations were largely with the Border State school of conservatives. His favorite counsellor was the most eminent and sturdy Republican opponent of an emancipation policy. His decision in favor of that policy, like the Proclamation which announces it, is entirely his own. The "pressure" to which he deferred was that of an urgent public necessity and the emphatic conviction of the great mass of our loyal citizens.

And, though few days have elapsed since the Proclamation was uttered, the evils predicted by its opponents are already banished to the limbo of chimera. Those officers who threatened to resign in case an emancipation policy were adopted make no haste to justify their menaces. As yet, not one of them has done so; in time, a few may screw their courage to the sticking-point. There are enough who can be spared; and they are generally those who deprecate and denounce an "Abolition war." May they yet prove men of their word!

Outside of the army, the general feeling is one of wonder that this act of direst portent to the rebellion has been so long delayed. Even the rebels share in this amazement. When secession was first openly mooted at the South, every Unionist argued that secession was practical abolition. It has puzzled them to comprehend the weary months through which their prophecies were left unfulfilled. They will be perplexed no longer.

The Opposition in the loyal States is manifestly weakened by the Proclamation. Their dream is of wearing out the Unionists by disappointments and delays, restoring a Democratic ascendency in the government, and then buying back the rebels to an outward loyalty by new concessions and guaranties to slavery. Hence torpid campaigns, languid strategy, advances without purpose, and surrenders without necessity. But the policy of emancipation brings the quarrel to a speedy decision. The rebel States must promptly triumph or brave a social dissolution. Every Union advance into a rebel region henceforth clears a broad district of slaves. The few are hurried off by their masters; the many escape to a land of freedom. How signally this process will be accellerated after the first of January, few will yet believe. Let the war simply go on, with fluctuating fortunes, for a year or two longer, and the new slave empire will be nearly denuded of slaves. The process is at once inevitable and irresistible. Whether the able-bodied slaves thus escaping to the loyal States shall or shall not be used in whatever way they may be found most serviceable against the cruel despotism which so long robbed them of their earnings while crushing out their manhood, is purely a question of time. There are thousands who would last year have revolted against the employment of Blacks in any way in our struggle, who are now ripe for it: every week, as it transpires, adds to their number. Loyal men hesitated at first, believing that the rebellion would easily and speedily be put down. These have now discovered their mistake and amended it. An aristocracy of three hundred thousand generally capable, energetic persons, accustomed to rule, and recognizing a deadly foe in every opponent of their wishes, surrounded by twice so many shrewd and skilful parasites, and wielding the entire resources of ten millions of people, are not easily conquered. The poor Whites fill the ranks of their armies; the Blacks grow the food and perform the labor essential to the subsistence of those armies and of their families. Slavery unassailed is the strongest natural base of a gigantic rebellion: it easily adapts all the resources of a people to the stern exigencies of war. Slavery resisted and undermined is a very different affair, as the annals of this struggle are destined to prove.

Let no doubts, then, vex the mind of a single hearty Unionist as to the issue of our great contest. The Proclamation has not added a thousand to the number of our enemies, while it has supplied four millions with the most cogent reasons for being henceforth our friends. These millions are humble, ignorant, timid, distrustful, and now grinding in the prison-house of the traitors. They are not, let us frankly admit, the equals in prowess, capacity, or opportunity, of four millions of Whites; but they are, nevertheless, human beings; they have human affections and aspirations, and they feel the stirrings of the universal and indestructible human longing for liberty. "Breaking in a nigger" is a rough and pretty effectual process: it crushes down the manhood of its subject, but does not crush it out. Should the republic say to-morrow to its Black step-children, "We want one hundred thousand of you to aid in this struggle against the slaveholding rebels, and will treat you in every respect as human beings should be treated," it would not have to wait long for the full number. Hitherto a low prejudice, studiously fostered by Democratic politicians for the vilest party ends, has repelled and expelled this abused race from the militia service of the Union. The exclusion is absurd where its impulse is not treasonable, and must share the fate of all absurdities. "Would you," asked a Unionist of a Democrat, "refuse the aid of a negro, if you were assailed and your life threatened by an assassin?" "Yes," replied the Democrat; "I would rather be killed by a White man than saved by a nigger." Who does not know that this man at heart sympathizes with the rebellion, and deprecates the War for the Union as unnecessary and ruinous?

That war will go on. Our new and vast levies, our new iron-clads, our new policy, will add immensely to the strength already put forth in vindication of the rightful authority of the Federal government and the integrity of the Union. Yet a little while, and the immense superiority in every respect of the moral and material forces of the loyal States will make themselves felt and respected. Yet a little while, and the authority of the Nation will be acknowledged by its now revolted citizens, and the rebellion will subside as suddenly as it broke upon us. Yet a little while, and ours will again be a land of peace, returning joyfully to the pursuits of productive industry and radiant with the sunlight of Universal Liberty.