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2d. That after the rebellion shall be quelled, and the authority of the Federal Government re-established, it must follow that Asylums will be needed in all of the Border States. These States have contributed men as well to crush, as to help the rebellion. By strict right, Union soldiers, alone, should be admitted into Asylums; but where society is entirely revolutionized, disorganized, in fact, in its municipal relations, as it now is throughout the South, it will be impossible to avoid extending help to the maimed and suffering rebel soldiers who, after the war, will unquestionably resume their allegiance, and become entitled to the protection of the United States as citizens. We do not exclude wounded enemies from our hospitals, but nurse and tend them, side by side with our own men, until they recover. The Government has even had to go farther. Since the fall of Vicksburg, it has issued rations to thousands of poor people whose previous position had been one of hostility towards it, yet who could not be left to starve. These rations belonged to the army; they were paid for by the loyal people, and intended to feed those who were periling their lives to re-assert the authority of our Government.

After the war, the Border as well as the other Southern States will be overrun with the maimed, and crippled remnants of the rebel army. What shall be done with them? Humanity will not pause to inquire which side they fought on. If they are too sick or maimed to work, and are in danger of starving, they must be fed. By whom? The Government. Is this just? Abstractly speaking, Yes; because they are its citizens. But relatively, and as regards their personal claim, No. The burthen of their support should devolve upon the State which sent them forth, and if the Government builds the Asylum, it does all that it should, since the citizens of the loyal States, whose money has enabled it to bestow this benefaction, should not be taxed to support for life those, whose only claim upon them is the misfortune of having failed to destroy that Government, from which they are now compelled to ask a support. Therefore, and in an economical point of view, the States, as States, should be not only allowed but required to maintain the Asylums created in their midst by the Government, on the principle that this would be a just distribution of the burthens of the war, instead of fastening them perpetually upon the people of the loyal States.

The objections urged against this plan, are, that the annual appropriations for the support of Military Asylums would not be as reliable, if left to State Legislatures, as to Congress, and some Western States are cited in illustration, in one of which in particular, an omission to provide the annual appropriation for a State Lunatic Asylum, rendered it necessary to close the institution and to scatter its pauper inmates.

Granting this to have happened once, and in one State, or even that it will require several years to so reorganize municipal institutions, including pauper asylums, in the South, as to enable sufficient provision to be made for the destitute sick and maimed rebel soldiers -- granting this, it is replied, that such facts should not be received as a valid argument against the system of State support, which is advocated above, because they are in their very nature temporary, and would stimulate efforts to redress the wrong thus committed. For, admitting that any Legislature should again neglect to perform its duty in this particular, or that relating to any similar eleemosynary institution, the Executive could easily enough provide means, through the credit of the State, to support such institution until the next session of that body, and no one will pretend that any Legislature, whose members are elected annually would dare to neglect for a second time its Invalid Asylums. Certainly, if it did, its members might well hesitate to confront their constituents, whose indignation would lead them to administer a rebuke in forms not easily forgotten.

Another objection and flowing out of this, is, that while in some States the annual appropriations would be large, and the inmates of these homes pampered, in others, the appropriation would be barely sufficient to maintain the establishment.

It is urged that were Congress the general almoner for all, this could not happen, since a graduated scale of the necessities of each Asylum, founded upon the number of inmates -- cost of living in that locality, and its productive industry -- would always guide the government in making a just appropriation for all. By these means all Invalids would be equally provided for, in whatever State of the Union dwelling, and there would be no feelings of envy cherished towards those who, under a different dispensation, might be known to be luxuriating in comforts not shared by others.

The answer made to an objection of this kind is, that no restrictions can, or should be put upon the amount which States may choose to appropriate towards the maintenance of their own invalid citizens. This is a matter which, like private charity, concerns the giver alone. If some can afford and choose to give them comforts which others can not, or will not, this is one of those self-regarding acts over which outsiders have no cause to complain. It is not a wrong against either individuals or society; takes nothing from any man, that he possessed before, and is simply doing with one's own, according as fancy dictates and law allows. It may possibly be said that the example would be bad, and tend to dispirit the less-favored Invalids in other States. This might indeed happen, and would, doubtless, were the distinction in comforts to be made by the Government, instead of States; but so far as these are concerned, their method of treating their own Invalids would be considered a matter of home policy and private right, with which no citizens of other States could justly find fault.