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sion had yet attempted to disturb the public repose, or, by their conflicting yet conjoint operation, had involved in peril our own hopes of civil and religious freedom, and those of the whole world besides.

CONCLUSION.

IN the present volume facts have been presented and reasonings stated which, it seems to me, leave no reasonable doubt as to what should be the present action of the government if it be desired to resuscitate the happy condition of things existing before the commencement of the war, the effect of which has been so deleteriously to discompose the wise and salutary system of checks and balances, without the existence of which a state of pure republican liberty would have been impossible. It is probable that in a second volume, drawn up under more favorable circumstances, and admitting greater freedom of exposition, many additional facts may be exhib ited, somewhat bolder arguments be adduced, and numerous additional sketches of individual character and illustrative personal anecdotes be supplied, should the plan of this work seem to have secured a fair portion of the public favor. I shall close now, for the present, by an emphatic affirmation of a great truth, which I can not but hope has been already made sufficiently apparent, that the peculiar civic institutions framed by our fathers can not be made preservative of permanent freedom except by restoring as soon as possible the original coequality of

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the states, upon the essentiality of which Mr. Pinckney so cogently and eloquently insisted in the memorable Missouri struggle of 1819. Extinguish this coequality in any way, and, instead of a republic, we will necessarily bring into existence an imperial despotism, by whatever name called. Subject to enslavement the numer ous distinct communities formerly enjoying liberty, and vest the power of controlling all the domestic concerns of each of them in a central government, whether that central government shall consist of a Roman Senate, with an Imperator or military commander in chief at its head, or of an American Congress, with a similar commander-in-chief called 'President, empowered to counsel it in regard to all public questions, and it will not be possible to prevent the rapid concentration of all civil power in the legislative and executive department of the system first, and very soon thereafter the consolidation of all power in the hands of a single individual, which individual will, of course, be the executive officer who wields the war power. The experience of nations is uniform on this subject; and even had no such fatal example of the ruin of freedom heretofore occurred, it would really seem that a mere statement of this proposition, as a yet unproven theorem, ought to be sufficient to enforce the important truth referred to upon the most opaque intellect. I do not desire to be understood on this occasion as denying, nor is it indeed at all necessary for any purpose the attainment of which is at this moment desirable, that the government existing in Washington City was not, in order to preserve its own existence, fully justified in wielding all the powers which it

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is known, upon the ground of military necessity, to have employed; nor is it necessary either to dispute the proposition so earnestly insisted upon in certain quarters at present, that these vast powers, once seized upon, may continue to be wielded by that government permanently, if it shall choose to do so, over those unfortunate eleven millions of American people whom the terrible. exigencies of war and the unwise perseverance in hostilities up to the moment when, as has been seen, they were compelled to submit unconditionally to the will of the conqueror. But the still graver and more vital question now is, Shall this sweeping enslavement be enforced, when such enforcement must inevitably result in the ultimate enslavement also of the additional nineteen millions of our whole federal population? In other words, would those in the two houses of Congress at this moment act wisely in pursuing such a course as all far-seeing and considerate statesmen would unite in assuring them must necessarily subject to despotic rule the very people who have selected them as THE defenders of their own liberties? I am afraid that unprejudiced men in future generations will be inclined to recognize the struggle now progressing in Washington City, in connection with President Johnson's reconstruction policy, as a struggle between philosophic and discriminating statesmen on the one side, and factionists and demagogues on the other. For, after all, what is the distinction between these two classes of individuals? I understand that a statesman is one who understands the concerns of his whole country, and who exercises also a kindly and providing care over all of these concerns for the general good of

the whole nation, and not only for its temporary good, but for its lasting welfare; while a factionist is purblind in his very nature and moral constitution, delights in indulging one-sided and narrow views, acts alone in furtherance of what he supposes to be the interest of his own particular class or faction, or, what is worse still, in order to obtain for himself and his immediate associates a little momentary eclat, or the contemptible and unprofitable gratification of his and their ungenerous prejudices, or unphilosophic and unamiable lust of power. The conduct of the patriot statesman is ever regulated by principle; for the maintenance of principles he will dare to despise faction, and all its seductive rewards and fiendish menaces.

Party, as we all know, is far superior in dignity to faction; and yet the patriot statesman will not hesitate to disjoin himself from party itself, in order to preserve his country's freedom and happiness. Who now blames Edmund Burke for openly abandoning the Whig party in England, with which he had been so long and so honorably allied, in order to aid in rescuing the British isles from Jacobinical influences, at that moment being imported from the school of Marat, of Danton, and Robespierre? Who now rails at Sir Robert Peel for dissolv ing his political affiliation with the opponents of Catholic Emancipation, of Free Trade, and of Parliamentary Reform? Who, save a few absurd bigots, now denounces Mr. Clay for declaring, in 1850, that if the Whig party, of which he had been once the acknowledged embodi ment, should become abolitionized, he would no longer hold connection with it? Who does not admire even Washington still more highly when he learns from Mr.

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Jefferson's posthumous writings, that the Father of his Country was never seen even for a moment to sink into a mere party devotee? It is even asserted, on high authority, that circumstances may exist in which a great statesman might feel justified, amid the fierce and evershifting currents of party conflict, to act, on principle, sometimes with one of two antagonizing factions, sometimes with the opposing one, in order, by casting the weight of his influence now into one scale, now into another, to preserve the contending civic forces in a state of harmless equipoise. It was just such conduct as this which posterity has so much admired in the incorruptible and enlightened Halifax, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and on account of which the illiberal zealots of party denounced him as a "trimmer;" and it is gratifying to learn from the page of authentic history that this great and good man, *"instead of quarreling with his nickname, assumed it as a title of honor, and vindicated, with great vivacity, the dignity of the appellation. Every thing good, he said, trimmed between extremes. The temperate zone trims between the climate in which men are roasted and the climate in which they are frozen. The English Church trims between the Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy. The English Constitution trims between Turkish despotism and Polish anarchy; virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities, any one of which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice; nay, the perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the exact equilibrium of attributes none of which could preponderate without * Macaulay.