down upon us. Take the British Parliament, or the French Chamber of Deputies, or the Spanish Cortes, or the German Reichsrath, or the Servian Skupshtina, and compare them with our Congress and our Legislatures, and tell us: In which of these legislative assemblies is there the most intelligent, virtuous and wise thinking, speaking, and enacting? Is it not in those where the ballot-box, that contains exclusively present desires and requirements, is most bravely subjected to prognostics of the future by using the genius, the culture, and the patient study of the superior and more sagacious minds of the respective land and people? We will not, say that ours stands lowest on this point, but we will assert that, considering our freedom from the past or vested rights, we do not stand as high as we should. And the reason is: that our ballot-box government injects into our governments too much present cupidity, and that we have too little thought of the future. That constitutes our fatalism. It lies deep in our surroundings; it has grown with our growth; and it culminated, north and south, into the terrible, entirely unnecessary war, by which future historians will judge our governments.

THE CHURCH FATALISM.

Fatalistic as the politicians of America were, its clergymen were and are even more so. The Presbyterian (old) school) General Assembly met in Philadelphia, May 1861, and adopted (from the reports of both the majority and minority) the following preamble:-" Gratefully acknowledging the distinguished bounty and care of Almighty God towards this favored land, and also recognizing our obligation to submit to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, this General Assembly adopts the following resolutions :

"Resolved that, in view of the present agitated and unhappy condition of this country, there be set apart a day of prayer . . . to confess and bewail our national sins . . . to turn away His (God's) anger from us," &c.

The "distinguished bounty and care towards this favored land" spoken of in the preamble, evidently soon disappeared in the resolutions.

The Presbyterian Synod (old school) of South Carolina resolved: "That the people of South Carolina are now solemnly called on to imitate their revolutionary forefathers and stand up for their rights. We have an humble and abiding confidence,

that that God, whose truth we represent in this conflict, will be with us, and we exhort our churches and people to put their trust in God. . . . We ministers and elders of the Presbyterian Church give them our benediction and assurance, that we shall fervently and unceasingly implore for them the care and protection of Almighty God."

The Protestant General Assembly, assembled in Newark (1864), declared: "That the time has at length come in the providence of God, when it is His will, that every vestige of human slavery among us should be effaced, and that every Christian man should address himself, with industry and earnestness, to his appropriate part in the performance of this great duty."

The Presbyterians of the South asserted: "The Presbyterian Church in the United States has been enabled by Divine grace to pursue an eminently conservative, because a thoroughly scriptural policy, in relation to the subject of slavery. It has planted itself upon the Word of God, and utterly refused to make slaveholding a sin, or non-slaveholding a term of communion."

The Assembly of Baptists, gathered from the various northern states, met at Brooklyn, New York, May 1861, and resolved: "That the doctrine of secession is foreign to our Constitution, revolutionary, suicidal,-setting out in anarchy, and finding its ultimate issue in despotism."

The Baptists of Alabama announced, November 1860: "We declare to our brethren and fellow-citizens, before mankind and before our God, that we hold ourselves subject to the call of the proper authority in defence of the sovereignty and independence of the state of Alabama, and of her right, as a sovereignty, to withdraw from the Union."

And in Georgia they resolved, April 1861: "We consider it at once to be a pleasure and a duty to avow, that both in feeling and principle, we approve, indorse, and support the Government of the Confederate States of America."

The Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church issued, in 1862, a pastoral letter, and in it they quote as binding authority from the "Homilies of the Fathers of the Church, on "Willful Rebellion," passed in England in 1737 "He that nameth rebellion, nameth not a singular and not one only sin, as is theft, robbery, murder, and such-like, but he nameth the whole puddle and sink of all sins against God and man; against his country, his countrymen, his parents, his children, his kinsfolk, his friends, and against all men universally; all sins against God and all men heaped together, nameth he that nameth rebellion."

Bishop Hopkins says in his protest in reply to this:"When the American Colonies revolted, and Rev. William White became the first chaplain of the revolutionary Congress, I do not see the slightest movement in our mother Church to condemn his course or that of the ministers that acted with him. The Bishop of London was the Diocesan of all the clergy in the Colonies, and had the undoubted right to suspend or to depose them, if the act of secular rebellion had been a proper ground for ecclesiastical denunciation. But that, in every age, has been regarded as a subject for the action of the State, and I doubt whether an instance can be found in the whole range of church history, where an ecclesiastical court has tried a man for secular rebellion."

The Methodist clergy said to Abraham Lincoln, May 1864: "We regard this dreadful scourge now desolating our land and wasting our nation's life, as the result of a most unnatural, utterly unjustifiable rebellion, involving the crime of treason against the best of human governments and sin against God."

The Confederate clergy, made up of all the Christian churches, said in 1863: "As an "As an excuse for violence, our enemies charge, that the Confederate States have attempted to overthrow the best government on earth, and call us traitors, rebels. We deny the charge. It will appear singular when men reflect upon it, that so many intelligent and Christian people should desire to withdraw from the best government on earth. And we need not discuss the kindness of those, who so generously propose to confer on us, by force of arms, the best government on earth."

And of Lincoln's proclamation they say: "Nothing but war! cruel, relentless, and desperate war! We solemnly protest, because, under the disguise of philanthropy, and the pretext of doing good, he would seek the approbation of mankind for a war that promises to humanity only evil, and that continually. . . . The condition of the slaves here is not wretched, as northern fictions would have men believe, but prosperous and happy; and would have been more so, but for the mistaken zeal of abolitionists."

We will not quote further. Enough has been given to show the entire anarchy that prevailed then in America upon every public question. Connect therewith the fact, that the public. men between 1861-76 were, as compared to those of 17801810, of a very low type, there having been a steady decline in the calibre of those at the head of affairs. Then reflect, that while mobs were vociferating: "This is the best govern

ment the world ever saw!" good and wise Americans were hanging their heads in shame over the scenes that were going on around them. And who wonders any more, that fatalism had possession of public conduct? Both governments, the North as well as the South, had inefficient administrations; both wasted twice as many men and means as should have been, and both adopted about the same measures, viz: forced loans; corrupt conscriptions; false taxation; insecurity to life and property. Such was the order of the day in both sections. The writer hereof lived north before and during the war, and we say this as an eyewitness of things there. No expostulation with friends or foes availed, for the ready reply was: "This is fate!" "It could not have been avoided!" A greater falsehood was never uttered. We know whereof we affirm. The war was not fate, it was-crime; and it came because fatalism was then public opinion, and was voted into the ballot-box. Its true atrociousness came out, when Mrs. Surrat, an innocent woman, and Wirtz, a friendless foreigner, were hung for crimes committed by others, simply because public frenzy needed an immolation. They were, however, not the only victims of fatalism!

CHAPTER XXXII.

TREASON AND TRAITORS.

"The calumnies of time

Spare not the fame of him that fails,
But try the Cæsar and the Cataline
By the true touchstone-success."

-Byron.

WE do not agree with Byron, that success is the true touchstone of men's actions; but we admit, that by it, as a general rule, public men are judged. It has been the criterion as to the men, whose character we have to pass upon in this chapter.

No society has suffered more from trials and executions for treason, than that of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the three mother-countries of the largest portion of the population of these United States; and as the public mind of this country moves in British grooves of thought, it is proper, that our inquiries into the American doctrine of treason should be preceded by a brief cursory review of that of England.

In that country treason entered not only political but also social life, through the doctrine of "petit treason," and it has colored British feelings to a larger degree than those of any other people. And this is still the case, though the public disposition is less intense than formerly. One of the main reasons for the older cruelties, existed in the peculiar historic development of the British Isles, which made partisanism always pass for patriotism. England never had up to the eighteenth century a government that loved all its people, nor did all the people ever love the respective governments. In Scotland and Ireland hatreds of the English invaders were superadded to those pre-existing at home. There was, therefore, never a time when there was any thorough feeling of allegiance; and every treason trial had in it large grains of injustice; because they were prosecutions of opposite partisans. A man might be false to his country, and not be guilty of treason; and he might be true to it, and be found guilty of