"Though many a gifted mind we meet,
And fairest forms we see,

To live with them is far less sweet

Than to remember thee!"

It is fortunate both for our safety and the safety of the Constitution, that these politico-sentimental gentlemen represent only a certain theory of the Constitution, and not the Constitution itself. Their leading defect is an incapacity to adjust their profound legal intellects to the altered circumstances of the country. Any child in political knowledge is competent to give them this important item of political information,that by no constitution of government ever devised by human morality and intelligence were the rights of rascals so secured as to give them the privilege of trampling on the rights of honest men. Any child in political knowledge is competent to inform them of this fundamental fact, underlying all laws and constitutions, that, if a miscreant attempts to cut your throat, you may resist him by all the means which your strength and his weakness place in your power. Any child in political knowledge is further competent to furnish them with this additional bit of wisdom, — that every constitution of government provides, under the war-power it confers, against its own overthrow by rebels and by enemies. If rebels rise. to the dignity and exert the power of enemies, they can be proceeded against both as rebels and as enemies. As rebels, the Government is bound to give them all the securities which the Constitution may

guarantee to traitors. As enemies, the Government is restricted only by the vast and vague "rights of war," of which its own military necessities must be the final judge.

"But," say the serene thinkers and scholars whom the rogues use as mouthpieces, "our object is simply to defend the Constitution. We do not believe that the Government has any of the so-called 'rights of war' against the rebels. If Jefferson Davis has committed the crime of treason, he has the same right to be tried by a jury of the district in which his alleged crime was committed that a murderer has to be tried by a similar jury. We know that Mr. Davis, in case the rebellion is crushed, will not only be triumphantly acquitted, but will be sent to Congress as Senator from Mississippi. This is mortifying in itself, but it still is a beautiful illustration of the merits of our admirable system of government. It enables the South to play successfully the transparent game of 'Heads I win, tails you lose,' and so far must be reckoned bad. But this evil is counterbalanced by so many blessings, that nobody but a miserable Abolitionist will think of objecting to the arrangement. We, on the whole, agree with the traitors, whose designs we lazily aid, in thinking that Jeff. Davis and Charles Sumner are equally guilty, in a fair estimate of the causes of our present misfortunes. Hang both, we say; and we say it with an inward confidence that neither will be hanged, if the true principles of the Constitution be carried out."

The political rogues and the class of honest men we have referred to are, therefore, practically associated in one party to oppose the present Government. The rogues lead; the honest men follow. If this new party succeeds, we shall have the worst party in power that the country has ever known. Buchanan as President, and Floyd as Secretary of War, were bad enough. But Buchanan and Floyd had no large army to command, no immense material of war to direct. As far as they could, they worked mischief, and mischief only. But their means were limited. The Administration which will succeed that of Abraham Lincoln will have under its control one of the largest and ablest armies and navies in the world. Every general and every admiral will be compelled to obey the orders of the Administration. If the Administration be in the hands of secret traitors, the immense military and naval power of the country will be used for its own destruction. A compromise will be patched up with the Rebel States. The leaders of the rebellion will be invited back to their old seats of power. A united South combined with a Pro-slavery faction. in the North will rule the nation. And all this enormous evil will be caused by the simplicity of honest men in falling into the trap set for them by traitors and rogues.

September, 1862.

THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY TO THE

UNITED STATES.

THE hostility of foreign governments to the United States is due as much at least to dread of their growing power as dislike of their democracy; and accordingly the theory of the Secessionists as to the character of our Union has been as acceptable to the understandings of our foreign enemies as the acts of the Rebels against its government have been pleasing to their sympathies. They well know that a union of States whose government recognized the right of Secession would be as weak as an ordinary league between independent sovereignties; and as the rapid growth of the States in population, wealth, and power is certain, they naturally desire that, if united, these States shall be an aggregation of forces neutralizing each other, rather than a fusion of forces which, for general purposes, would make them a giant nationality. Accordingly, centralized France reads to us edifying homilies on the advantages of disintegration; and England, rich with the spoils of suppressed insurrections, adjures us most plaintively to respect the sacred rights of rebellion. The simple explanation of this hypocrisy or irony is, that both France and

England are anxious that the strength of the United States shall not correspond to their bulk. The looser the tie of union, the greater the number of confederacies into which the nation should split, the safer they would feel. The doctrine of the inherent and undivided sovereignty of the States will therefore find resolute champions abroad as long as it has the most inconsiderable faction to support it at home.

The European nations are kept in order by what is called the Balance of Power, and this policy they would delight to see established on this continent. Should the different States of the American Union be occupied, like the European States, in checking each other, they could not act as a unit, and their terrific rate of growth in wealth and population, as compared with that of the nations across the Atlantic, would not excite in the latter such irritation and alarm. The magic which has changed English abolitionists into partisans of slaveholders, and French imperialists into champions of insurrection, came from the figures of the Census Reports. It is calculated that the United States, if the rate of growth which obtained between 1850 and 1860 is continued, will have, forty years hence, a hundred millions of inhabitants, and four hundred and twenty thousand millions of dollars of taxable wealth,-over three times the present population, and over ten times the present wealth, of the richest of European nations. It is probable that this concrete fact exerts more influence on the long-headed statesmen of Europe than any abstract dislike of de