recognized by all truly virtuous and enlightened men as the restorer of his country's liberties and the renovator of its glories. In view of the great object, now apparently almost attained—the renewal of that noble federative system devised by our fathers, but which the earthquake shock of civil war has so seriously disordered--how con temptible appear the puny sophisticators of the hour. who are painfully taxing their overheated brains with the utterly unprofitable question whether or not the states lately in rebellion did or did not succeed in getting out of the pale of the Union by the now exploded expe dient of secession! One thing seems to be sufficiently certain these lately seceding states are at present suff ciently in the Union to co-operate most promptly and e fectively in the great constitutional amendment whic has forever extinguished slavery on this continent, and deprived a vaporing and restless fanaticism of that foo upon which it has heretofore banqueted and grown fear fully potential for mischief. The special message of th President, which is placed in my hand while I now write sustained as it is by the manly and magnanimous repor of General Grant, supplies full assurance as to the stat of public feeling in the South in regard to the conditio of things brought about inevitably by the war, and re ders it manifest that, so far as the great body of our ve ing population both North and South is concerned, a ∞ dial and general reconcilement has been already consur mated. We are now fully justified in expecting for o country the realization of all that national prosperity a happiness which the most sanguine of our statesmen fr merly anticipated for her, before either abolition or seces

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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 exhibited, somewhat bolder arguments be adduced, and numer ous 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 che peculiar cívic 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 what ever 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 coun sel 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 consol idation 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 proposi tion, 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 mo ment desirable, that the government existing in Washington City was not, in order to preserve its own exist ence, 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, I 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 unprof itable gratification of his and their ungenerous prejudices, or unphilosophic and unamiable lust of power. The conduct of the patriot statesman is ever regulated by prin ciple; 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 Robes pierre? 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 embodiment, 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.